Has the heat got you down? You’re probably not alone. Wintertime—with its long, dark nights—is the season most associated with low mood and depression. But sun-filled summer days can also bring on the doldrums, particularly for the subset of people who experience a summertime version of seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—a type of depression with a […]
Policy and infrastructure changes are urgently needed to protect our mental health from the impact of high temperatures. Extreme heat days are an inevitable consequence of a warming world, and things are not cooling down. Globally, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and the Met Office—the United Kingdom’s national weather service—predicts that 2024 may […]
Scientists want to understand how commercially available cannabis products affect users. They have to get creative to research it legally. Dr. Carrie Cuttler, an associate professor at Washington State University and the director of its Health and Cognition Lab, has watched research participants use cannabis over Zoom for some of her studies. Her lab has […]
Fostering positive change through scholarship Tiarå Freeman, an experimental psychology graduate student, was raised on an organic farm in northern New Mexico. Her family grew everything, she said—squash, corn, peppers, tomatoes, okra, spinach, broccoli, and “swaths of cosmos”—which are related to sunflowers and come in lovely shades of fuchsia, pale purple, and bright orange. foraged for wild spinach, […]
Clinical psychology doctoral student loves working with moms and infants Marco Ramirez Gonzalez came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was five and lived in El Paso, Texas, close to the border. Later, his family moved to Houston where he attended Seven Lakes High School, an enormous school with an enormous population of 3,600 […]
As a science cat, I’ve changed my mind a lot over the years. I used to wear a fancy neck scarf called a cravat all the time. Now I’m comfy in my lab coat. I talked about that with my friend Makita White. She’s a graduate student in the psychology department at Washington State University. […]
After a successful pilot launch in 2023, the Seattle Experience, a faculty-led alternative spring break program hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences, kicked off the first of a three-year donor-funded series this March. This year’s cohort brought together 12 undergraduate students from several majors across five WSU campuses. The students spent five days in […]
A study conducted by Washington State University (WSU) has found that notifying students of their instructors’ growth mindset results in better grades for first generation students. Growth mindset refers to “the belief that abilities are not innate but can be improved.” WSU psychology researcher and lead author of the study Elizabeth Canning and graduate student […]
Just two emails, at the right time with the right message, can make a big difference for students who are the first in their families to go to college. A recent Washington State University study highlighted the power of an instructors’ growth mindset — the belief that abilities are not innate but can be […]
A partnership between Washington State University’s Center for Civic Engagement and the LAUNCH Program is bringing service-learning into the classroom, with positive impacts on student success. The two offices collaborated on an effort to include service-learning in Psychology 105 and Human Development 200 courses in the 2023-24 academic year. More than 800 students were asked […]