Another busy year lies behind us, and with 2018’s end comes the opportunity to look back and recap what happened. What better way to do this than to look at what you, Psychreg readers, found most interesting. Here’s the top ten list of most popular articles. Click the title to read the article in full.
Top 1: What Is Stonewalling and What Are Its Effects (19,641 views) – Conflicts are a normal occurrence in any relationship. What makes them different is the nature of the conflicts and how quickly they are resolved. According to the marital expert Dr John Gottman one of the destructive communication patterns that contradict love and really destroy relationships is the act of stonewalling or silent treatment.
Top 2: Why People With Mental Illness Isolate Themselves (14,624 views) – People who struggle with mental health issues are perhaps the most isolated social group. Depression can cause people to isolate themselves. Also, isolation is common among those with bipolar disorder. A person can isolate themselves from others; or worse, the society inflicts isolation on the person with mental illness.
Top 3: List of Psychology Films (13,715 views) – On April, Psychreg published a list of psychology films. It was intended for psychology lecturers for them to show to their students to better illustrate some psychological concepts.
Top 4: Why Some People Dream in Black and White (10,762 views) – These are a few of the ‘typical’ and most common themes of our dreams. Weird and wonderful aren’t they? While we can’t profess to be experts in the complex metaphors that make up dreams, a conversation with a client alerted us to the fact that not everyone dreams in full-on colour. Some don’t recall anything but the haziest of minor details the next morning, some think they don’t dream at all (although it’s been proven that they do, they just don’t remember), and some dream in black and white only.
Top 5: How Social Media Addiction Affects Your Health and Well-Being? (7,500 views) – The mental health community has become progressively concerned about the ramifications of digital technology on our lives. It can fuel Internet addiction, with the damage lying in a person’s change in behaviour. An individual may spend increasing amounts of time online to generate the same pleasurable effect as before, taking over the majority of their attention and time.
We published a list of psychology films on April. Top 6: Why Our Connection With Nature Matters (6,123 views) – Nature is good for us. There’s plenty of evidence that exposure to nature is good for people’s health, well-being and happiness – with green spaces even promoting prosocial behaviours. Less is known about why nature is good for us. Simply put, nature is good for us because we are part of nature. We are human animals evolved to make sense of the natural world and this embeddedness in the natural world can often be forgotten and overlooked.
Top 7: The Negative Effect of Social Media on Self-Esteem (4,664 views) – We live in a world of technology filled with Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and all these other social media platforms. We can often be found on our phones, tablets, or computers posting pictures and updates or checking to see what everyone else has been up to. There are a lot of positives about using social media. For example, it is easier to keep in touch with people and know what is going on in their lives. It is also a great way for world news to travel. Unfortunately, this can come along with a negative impact on self-esteem. Social media can often tap into our insecurities.
Top 8: The Duality of Life and Death (3,913 views) – Duality is an essential concept that must be grasped if one is wanting to have a deeper understanding of life. Without recognising duality, we are missing out on one of the most profound learning tools available. Duality teaches us that every aspect of life is created from a balanced interaction of opposite and competing forces. Yet these forces are not just opposites; they are complementary. They do not cancel out each other, they merely balance each other like the dual wings of a bird.
Top 9: Why Mess Causes Stress: How Clutter Affects Your Brain (3,743 views) – There is no ‘Follow these rules and you will succeed’ in making a PhD work while raising little people. Although you may say this premise is true for anything in life, without doubt the territory of simultaneous PhD study and parenting is somewhat skewed towards ‘highly risky’.
Top 10: Psychological Reasons Why Some People Play Video Games (3,258 views) – There has to be a reason why millions of people around the world spend hours of their day playing video games. Discussions around the subject often lead to the idea of ‘escapism’; that gamers play simply to get away from the mundaneness of reality, but is this really the only explanation? Or are there psychological mechanisms underlying the behaviour?
Well done and massive thank you to the authors who shared their articles! Until next year!
Dennis Relojo is the founder of Psychreg and is also the Editor-in-Chief of Psychreg Journal of Psychology. Aside from PJP, he sits on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals, and is a Commissioning Editor for the International Society of Critical Health Psychology. A Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society, Dennis holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Hertfordshire. His research interest lies in the intersection of psychology and blogging. You can connect with him through Twitter @DennisRelojo and his website.
