Find coverage of Northeastern University in the press.
Pen pal programs have evolved, but old-fashioned letter writing could be coming back
Psychology professor at Northeastern University, Laurie Kramer, says sending and receiving handwritten letters creates a special bond.
Nature News
How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models
David Bau is very familiar with the idea that computer systems are becoming so complicated it’s hard to keep track of how they operate. “I spent 20 years as a software engineer, working on really complex systems. And there’s always this problem,” says Bau, a computer scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
A college will reopen the site of a campus shooting. Some aren’t ready.
There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach, said Sarah Peck, director of the UnitedOnGuns initiative of Northeastern University’s Public Health Advocacy Institute. Officials’ biggest consideration should be the psychological impact on those affected, said Peck, who helped create a handbook for local officials on handling mass shootings. Survivors should “have a big voice” in the decision, she said.
Should Parents Intervene When Siblings Fight?
In general, you should not ignore sibling skirmishes, because it sends the message that you condone what’s happening, said Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University in Boston who runs a program called More Fun With Sisters And Brothers, for parents of 4- to 8-year-old children who want to help those kids build positive […]
How emotions are ‘made’: why your definition of sadness is unlike anyone else’s
Lisa Feldman Barrett says we need to revamp our thinking on emotions. She’s a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, where she applies psychology and neuroscience research to explore how emotions arise in the brain. In her new book, How Emotions are Made, she challenges the classical view, which holds that emotions are […]
Smiling is not a universal sign of happiness, according to modern neuroscience
Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Northeastern University professor of psychology, is at the forefront of the “constructed emotion” theory. In this view, emotions aren’t standard across all human brains. For example: Fear does not have a specific operating location in the brain, nor does it create a universal response, like widening your eyes.
Professor explains ‘how emotions are made’
Human emotions have confounded people for centuries, especially people who want to measure and understand them. Our next guest is one of those researchers. Her advice is think of emotions like money: very real but also created by human agreement. Northeastern University psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett says this in her new book, “How Emotions […]
Why do fans excuse the Patriot’s cheating past?
David DeSteno has a special vantage point for observing public response to the Patriots. He is a professor of psychology in Patriots country, at Northeastern University, in Boston, and he was a co-author of the study mentioned above. DeSteno is not a football fan, but he is an expert on the psychology of emotion, hypocrisy […]
The New Yorker
The Bot Politic
But when I spoke with Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, she thought that my job seemed easy—maybe too easy. “People have always created personalities for objects,” she said. “People have always talked to their cars; they’ve talked to their plants; they’ve talked to their blankets; they’ve talked to their stuffed […]
7 habits of resilient teams
It’s difficult to build resilient teams if the people on them are afraid to express themselves or make mistakes, says Len Glick, professor of management and organizational development at Northeastern University. Creating psychological safety is done by allowing team members to make mistakes or disagree without negative repercussions. When team members feel safe, they’re more […]
In defense of Facebook’s newsfeed study
Is it problematic that Facebook was the one to run the study, and for commercial purposes? If you’re feeling exploited — either by Facebook’s collection of data or by the way the company used it — then you have a bigger issue with 21st-century enterprises more generally. Whether disclosed publicly or not, the use of […]
Emotions may not be so universal after all
Our current understanding of facial expressions could be specific to Western cultures. From a very young age, infants have a way of making their feelings known – contorted faces and howls indicate their displeasure with a meal or a damp diaper, a gummy smile their contentment, and a furrowed brow their puzzlement over a new […]