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Buffering Burnout: How Mindfulness Changes your Emotion Regulation to Deal with Everyday Stress
Science is, at its most fundamental, an attempt at accurately describing how the world is. Planets move in elliptical orbits, for example. But some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries come from going one step further; from attempts at accurately describing why the world is how it is. Newton’s law of gravitation, for example, explains why planets prefer the funkier circle. Psychological science is no different. Accurately describing the world between our ears is already a substantial challenge–but it gets really interesting (and useful for interventions) when we start questioning why it is that way. Several reviews have established that mindfulness leads to reduced burnout symptomology (Li et al., 2019;…
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The Echoes of Intergenerational Trauma: Navigating Intimate Relationships in Adulthood
Have you ever wondered why some people struggle to fully open up to close friends or partners, even when they really want to? Our ability to explore and build such trust and intimacy with others does not develop in isolation. Rather, it is shaped long before our first relationship, influenced by our own childhood experiences and early environments. Yet, for many second-generation immigrants, it is not only their own experiences that shape their emotional reality, but also those of their parents. Alongside cultural values and traditional practices, second-generation immigrants may also inherit the psychological effects of past trauma they never directly experienced. Often rooted in displacement and migration, traumatic experiences…
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Shaping Romantic Relationships: Exploring Interactions with Psychotherapy and Culture
How did you spend Valentine’s Day? Whether it was spent with a loved one, happily or unhappily single, or doing university work, romantic relationships are a common experience for the majority of people at some point in their life. Most people can vouch for the fact that they greatly impact wellbeing, life-satisfaction, and stress. However, relationships don’t just affect us; we shape our relationships through our own emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and attachment styles. Interestingly, many of the variables that shape romantic relationships are also skills and characteristics which are often worked on in psychotherapy, yet this link has been previously neglected. In recent years, psychotherapy has become a common…
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January webinar: Dry January
Dear RP friends, The Research Office has started the year strong with a new webinar on the 22nd of January, which revolved around the topic of Dry January with our speaker Richard Visser. Richard Visser, is the professor of Health Psychology at Brighton & Sussex Medical School (UK). With over 30 years of experience in health psychology and public health research, his work focuses on topics such as alcohol use, gender and health, sexuality and relationships, and health service use. He is co-author of Psychology for Medicine and Healthcare (4th ed., Sage, 2025) and has extensive expertise in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research. He was first involved in the Dry…
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Not Every Silence Is a Crime
Public reactions to the deaths of children in different conflicts often vary markedly. Some individuals, for example, feel a strong emotional response to the suffering of children in Ukraine, while others react more intensely to the suffering of children in Gaza. But what accounts for these differences in empathy? What factors influence why some people respond more strongly to certain tragedies than others, and what does this reveal about the nature of human empathy? Empathy is commonly defined as the capacity to understand and share the feelings of others (Decety & Jackson, 2004). However, especially in the context of social events, individuals’ tendencies to empathize are largely shaped by the…
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The “What-the-Hell-Effect”: How Small Slip-Ups Spiral Out of Control
Imagine starting your day fully committed to a new goal: a fresh morning workout, a strict budget plan, or a consistent reading habit. Yet the moment you slip even slightly, for example, hitting snooze once, overspending on snacks, or skipping a planned activity, something curious happens. Instead of shrugging it off and getting back on track, you think: “Well… what the hell. I already blew it!” And suddenly, the goal feels abandoned. This psychological pattern, where one minor lapse triggers a chain reaction of counterproductive behavior, is known in psychology as the “What-the-Hell-Effect” (Polivy & Herman, 1985; Policy et al., 2010). The term originally comes from research on dieting but…
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Beyond Grades and Deadlines: The Power of Christmas Cards in Academia
If there are any clear signs of what this time of year stands for, it’s the cold gusts of wind blowing through tree branches with no leaves, the frost painted across windows during early mornings, and… the distant sound of Mariah Carey’s whistled notes signalling that “it’s tiiiiiiiiiime”. For many, listening to Mariah Carey’s song on repeat is an established Christmas tradition, but I’d like to remind you of another important one: exchanging Christmas cards. In our current era of booming digital technology — where GiFs, group chats, and instant messaging prevail — exchanging Christmas cards has shifted toward digital alternatives. However, this tradition remains a symbol of acknowledgement, appreciation,…
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Why Undergraduate Research Matters – Even if you do not Want a PhD
When students hear “undergraduate research,” many immediately picture PhD applications, or careers in academia. It’s true, research experience is a golden ticket for those paths. But here is the thing: undergraduate research is not just for aspiring academics. Even if you are planning a career in business, healthcare, policy, or something completely outside the ivory tower, research can still be one of the most valuable experiences of your degree. Why? Because research does not just teach you about your discipline. It teaches you how to think, solve problems, and work in ways that are highly transferable to nearly any career. Think of research as a professional boot camp: it challenges…
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The perfect cocktail for the brain
instagram: @zbudgiez Does the expression “The brain is like a muscle; you have to train it” ring a bell? At some point, you might have heard this. Just like a rigorous lifting workout at the gym, the brain has a similar behavior to the body’s muscles, which is why it gets frequently compared. But guess what? neurons hardly grow after the age of 25. However, the synaptic connections between them do proliferate along and throughout a lifetime, which is what we commonly call synaptogenesis. This phenomenon is eased by neuronal plasticity, and findings trust that “brain gains” are based on the new synaptic connections. But why? Well, increased connections are…
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When Life Gives You Trolleys Add a Foreign Language – The Foreign Language Effect
The majority of students living in a dorm can relate to the feeling of how one cup of coffee with a roommate poses a serious threat to your academic productivity. At some point, the conversation becomes so engaging that at the end, the five-minute break between study sessions becomes a two-hour-long discussion. I am no exception, as it happened to me not too long ago, when my roomie, a foreigner, and I engaged in an interesting debate about mental processing in native and foreign languages. So, curiosity killed the cat and I decided to dig up more information, to see if using other languages influences our decision-making. The foreign language…
