Stockholm university

Psychology and Human Behaviour

On this page we collect articles about Psychology and Human Behaviour.

Elektrodmössa i Luktlabb

News

SUBIC - Stockholm University Brain Imaging Centre

Research grants for the use of SUBIC equipment

Stockholm University researchers are welcome to apply for SUBIC time grant.

Brain Research - Theme page Chemistry - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Plants, Animals and Nature - Theme page Physics - Theme page Life Science - Theme page Language, Literature and Culture - Theme page History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Geology, Geography and Landscapes - Theme page Digitalization and AI - Theme page Climate and Environment - Theme page
Ungas villkor och vuxenblivande (2024, red. Linnéa Bruno), Libers förlag.
Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen

Världshälsodagen - Fanny Edenroth Cato forskar om ungas psykiska välmående

Med anledning av Världshälsodagen och den Europeiska kommissionens arbete för att ”bryta stigmatiseringen för dem som lider av psykisk ohälsa” uppmärksammas här forskning om hur diagnosberättelser om bland annat autism och adhd allt oftare får stå som förklaring till normbrytande beteenden i vår tid och att stigmatisering inte sällan drabbar såväl vuxna som unga, men tar sig olika uttryck.

Barn och unga - Theme page Psykologi och mänskligt beteende - Theme page
Fanny Edenroth Cato. Foto: Sören Andersson, Stockholms universitet.
Department of Child and Youth Studies

World Health Day - Fanny Edenroth Cato researches young people's mental well-being

On the occasion of World Health Day and the European Commission's work to "break the stigma for those suffering from mental illness", attention is drawn here to research on how diagnosis stories about autism and ADHD, among other things, are increasingly used as an explanation for norm-breaking behaviors in our time and that stigmatization often affects both adults and young people, but takes different forms.

Children and Young People - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page
Love in the underground

For Valentine’s Day: Measure your relationship with a scientific self-test

Answer seven questions and get an indication of how your relationship is right now. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, researchers at Stockholm University are publishing a new study in the journal Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that introduces a scientifically validated scale, the ‘Valentine's Scale’. The scale measures how satisfied you are in your love relationship.

Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page
Forskaren Qiaolin Deng

10 MSEK to Strengthen Collaboration Between Research and Societal Impact

Qiaolin Deng has been awarded 3 MSEK in project funding from Region Stockholm for her research project on how the placenta is affected by type 1 diabetes during pregnancy. In total, nine researchers from Stockholm University (SU) have been granted 10 MSEK in project funding.

Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page School, Education and Learning - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Physics - Theme page Life Science - Theme page Chemistry - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page
A lonely girl with a phone sits on the steps
Department of Public Health Sciences

Loneliness is linked with increased psychosomatic complaints in young people

Higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of belonging are linked to increased youth psychosomatic complaints. This is shown in a new study from researchers at Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet. The study was published recently in the scientific journal BMC Public Health.

Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page
Stockholm Center on Global Governance

A Night of Insight: The Stockholm Center on Global Governance inaugurated

On May 2, the Stockholm Center on Global Governance and Stockholm University hosted an official inauguration event at the Scheffler Palace (Schefflerska palatset). The event featured an engaging lineup of speakers and insightful panel discussions which highlighted urgent challenges, but also potential promises of global governance today.

Social and economic sustainability - Theme page Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Law, Crime and Justice - Theme page International Relations and Migration - Theme page History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Economy and Society - Theme page

More premature babies born following Swedish parental leave policy

The introduction of a policy protecting parental leave benefits in Sweden in 1980 had unintended consequences on child health. The policy led to an increase in premature birth rates. This is shown by a study from researchers at Stockholm University, published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Children and Young People - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page

Snabbhetspremien i föräldraförsäkringen ledde till fler för tidigt födda barn

Införandet av en reform som skyddade nivån på föräldrars föräldrapenning 1980 fick oavsiktliga konsekvenser för barns hälsa. Reformen ledde till en ökning av antalet för tidigt födda barn. Det visar en studie från forskare vid Stockholms universitet som publicerats i den vetenskapliga tidskriften JAMA Pediatrics.

Picture of Jonas Tallberg presenting SCGG
Stockholm Center on Global Governance

SCGG at the Swedish Research Council’s first network meeting for Centers of Excellence

Professor and SCGG co-director Jonas Tallberg gave a presentation to introduce the SCGG at the Swedish Research Council’s first network meeting for Centers of Excellence. The event was held on March 7, at Piperska Muren, Stockholm.

Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page International Relations and Migration - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Law, Crime and Justice - Theme page

Conversations in an MR scanner provides a novel view of the brain’s language network

Researchers have revealed new insights into how the brain processes speech and listening during conversations through advanced investigations using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a groundbreaking study published in the esteemed journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers compared brain activity in individuals while both speaking and listening during natural conversational situations.

Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Brain Research - Theme page
Iskra följer forskare som jobbar med mikroskop
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics

Mapping the brain's serotonin pathways increases knowledge of our emotions

Fear and curiosity are emotions that determine how adventurous or cautious we are. But how are our emotions controlled by biological factors in the brain's nerve cells? New research shows that clearly defined serotonin pathways in the brain and their connections to for example amygdala and hypothalamus affect how we feel and act.

DNA Research - Theme page Brain Research - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Chemistry - Theme page Life Science - Theme page SciLifeLab - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page

You don’t lose if you snooze

It is often claimed that using the snooze button can have negative effects on sleep and cognitive processes, but there has been no direct evidence to this effect. New research from the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University shows that snoozing may actually support the waking process for regular snoozers.

Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Brain Research - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Organization and Working Life - Theme page
Screenshot showing three squares from the pre-training of memory tests.

The sense of order distinguishes humans from other animals

Remembering the order of information is central for a person when participating in conversations, planning everyday life, or undergoing an education. A new study, published in the scientific journal PLoS One, shows that this ability is probably human unique. Even the closest relatives of humans, such as bonobos, do not learn order in the same way.

Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Plants, Animals and Nature - Theme page
Profile picture of Elisa Vigna
Department of Public Health Sciences

Elisa is a research assistant at Karolinska Institutet

She moved from Italy to Sweden in 2016 to study the master´s programme in public health sciences at Stockholm University. After graduation she worked several jobs, among which at a reinsurance company in Switzerland. Two years ago Elisa Vigna moved back to Stockholm to work as a research assistant at the National Centre for Suicide Research at Karolinska Institutet.

Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page
A teen girl smelling a rose

Smell words differ primarily in terms of pleasantness and edibility

Most languages lack a specialized vocabulary to describe smell experiences. People instead use words from other domains, such as “heavy”, “good” or “fruity”, when talking about smells. But which words are really used and how do they relate to each other? This has been answered for English by researchers at Stockholm University by using a fully automatic method that is based on texts from the Internet.

Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Language, Literature and Culture - Theme page
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Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page

Research projects

Assessing ADHD

ADHD is one of the most prevalent psychiatric conditions, consuming a large proportion of resources in psychiatric care, often accompanied by long waiting lists to receive proper assessment.

Picture by Tara Winstead
Body and Relationships

Cosmetic surgery is a current phenomenon that can raise many questions about the body, identity and relationships where the decision to undergo a surgical breast augmentation can raise concerns about how it is received and what consequences may follow in relationships with family and friends.

Läkare mäter bröst på kvinna i behå.
Co-coding with AI in computer programming

Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) has raised concerns: Will human skill be replaced by AI-based technologies? This project investigates how AI tools may be used as constructive resources in programming and creative design contexts. We adopt a perspective of co-creativity between user and technology.

Genre photo: Robot hand and human hand in a fistbump. Photo: Andrey Popov/Mostphotos.
Cognitive ability and demands and resources at work

The overall aim of the research project is to study the importance of personal resources (e.g. cognitive ability) and different demands and resources at work in relation to work- and health-related outcomes in a military context.

Research
Communication between humans and other animals

More and more people (both private individuals and scientists) see animals as subjects rather than objects. Pets are often viewed as family members, and we spend time trying to understand them and make them understand us. But how does communication between and within species work? This is something that linguistics is just beginning to explore.

Research
Fresh Start 2025 – New Year's Resolutions and Strategies for Goal-Attainment

Common New Year’s resolutions focus on changes in behavior with an expectation of positive outcomes regarding physical and mental health. The purpose of this project is to investigate Swedes' New Year's resolutions, how well we adhere to them, and whether the likelihood of a person keeping their resolution can be increased.

The text New Year's Resolutions on a backdrop of fireworks. AI-generated.
Group therapy in psychiatric care for complex and long-term problems

In psychiatric care, there is a great need for new effective treatments for patients with complex and long-term problems, who have not been sufficiently helped by the treatments they have undergone so far. In this project, we are testing a short group treatment for this patient group: ISTDP-G (Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy - Group).

Relax, in group therapy. Photo: Rudamese from Pixabay
How can we understand use of substance among young people?

Why do young people use psychoactive substances? Has substance use been normalized or is it still abnormal? Knowledge of this is needed for society to be able to understand and handle changes in consumption and attitudes that have been observed at an aggregate level in recent years.

Cigarettrök
Human–Computer Interaction for Economic Encounters

There is an increasing trend towards organizing economic and social exchange with the help of online platforms. The transportation service Uber and the short-term rental service Airbnb are two examples. This project focuses on economic encounters in relation to these new marketplaces.

Human–Computer Interaction for Economic Encounters. Illustration: Riyaz Sheikh.
Invisible process – cognition and working memory in dialogue interpreting

This project aims to lay the foundation for studying cognitive processes in interpreting dialogues. The research questions concern the nature of the interpreter’s cognitive resources, more specifically, the function of the monitoring processes as compared to other types of interpreting and the strategies applied to cope with cognitive load.

Illustration of people talking chat bubbles. Illustration: Dzmitry Baranau, MostPhotos
Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences and Cures

The main objective of this ambitious cross-disciplinary program is to investigate the nature and causes of knowledge resistance, the tendency not to accept available knowledge. This represents the first concerted effort to provide a unified framework within which to investigate knowledge resistance, going beyond the state of the art on several levels.

Lucid Universal Digital Dog Exposure (Ludde)

What type of stimulus material is best for treatment of dog phobia? Is virtual reality treatment comparable to traditional exposure therapy for dog phobia? That's a couple of questions this project wants to find the answers to.

Dog and man on a soccer field. Photo: H Katz.
Modelling usage-based language learning

The interdisciplinary project brings together ideas and methods from linguistics, complex systems, machine learning, biology, and cultural evolution to seek answers to one of the big questions about humans.

hand-drawn style that depicts a minimal cognitive architecture for language learning with two speake
Shared Uses of Intimate Technology

Intimate technologies, such as insulin pumps, smart vibrators, and digital contraceptives, are typically designed for use at an individual level. However, their use and its consequences are often shared and social. This project examines how emerging intimate technologies within reproductive health come to be shared.

Thermometer, smart phone, glass of water and lamp on a bedside table.
Sleep and social connection

The purpose of this project is to explore the dynamic interplay between sleep and social connection, assessing the bidirectional nature of their relationship, the mechanistic effects of daytime sleepiness and social motivation, and how they relate to health outcomes.

Five people on a bed with their heads in the center. Photo by Freepik from freepik.com
Social regulation of stress and threat

Stress is an integral part of everyday life. While many individuals will maintain mental health despite exposure to adversity, stressful experiences will put some individuals at risk of developing stress and threat-related psychopathology.

Research
The impact of student ordinal rank on mental health

This project will use Swedish high-quality population register data on students who attended grade 9 in 1990-1997 to study the impact of a student’s rank order position in the school on their mental health measured in the late teens and in early adulthood.

Boy sitting in a classroom
The importance of the MEP pathway in the microbiome and its effect on behavior

Our main aim is to study the effects of bacterial phosphoantigens (HMBPP and IPP) on appetite. We introduced these into mice by gavage and followed the differences in weight gain and gene transcription from relevant tissues. An unexpected effect on male salivary glands focused our interest also on their effects on immune response.

Research
Too tired to know?

Insufficient sleep has negative effects on several cognitive abilities, but little is known about the extent to which sleep-deprived people are aware of their own impairments.

Tired woman at computer, with coffee. Photo: Magnet.me from Pixabay
Understanding health inequalities experienced by sexual minorities, same-sex partners

The project "Understanding health inequalities experienced by self-identified sexual minorities, same-sex partners, and their children", aims to broaden the knowledge about health inequalities experienced among those who identify themselves as belonging to a sexual minority and their children, as well as among those living in a same-sex relationship.

Lesbian couple
Video Remote Interpreting (VRI)

Video Remote Interpreting (VRI): A study on Cognitive Load in Simultaneous and Dialogue Interpreting via video and interpreters' attitudes towards VRI in Sweden

Research
You and me and ADHD

This research project aims to explore a new couples course, "You and I and ADHD", designed for couples where one or both partners have ADHD.

Research
iADHD

A diagnosis of ADHD often comes with benefits such as medical treatment and educational interventions. An ADHD diagnosis can also lead to negative aspects such as stigma and exclusion in social settings or from certain jobs.

Young woman in the middle of the road. Photo: Beyzanur K. från Pexels.
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Research groups

Clinical developmental psychology

How do conditions such as ADHD, autism and anxiety arise? What underlies the everyday difficulties experienced by children and adults with these conditions? What is the best method to assess these conditions and what is it like to live with a diagnosis?

Busy brain. Photo: Tara Winstead from Pexels
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Clinical psychology, neuroscience and health

The research group conducts scientific research to increase our knowledge in clinical psychology, primarily interventions for mental health problems in people with and without neurodiversity such as autism and ADHD as well as mechanisms and neural correlates in the brain.

Three project photos with a neural network as a backdrop.
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Golkar's Research Lab

Golkar’s research lab investigates various aspects of emotion regulation and learning with a specific focus on how we learn and remember from aversive experiences.

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Group Emami

We work on infectious-disease biology with a focus on host-pathogen-vector signalling-communication. We provide a fundamental/quantitative description of communication in infection-biology/behaviour plasticity, and genetics towards the design of novel scientific technologies.

Noushin Emami
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Group Faye

Our aim is to study the effects of bacterial phosphoantigens (HMBPP and IPP) on appetite. We introduced these into mice by gavage and followed the differences in weight gain and gene transcription from relevant tissues. An unexpected effect on male salivary glands focused our interest also on their effects on immune response.

Ingrid Faye
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Network for the study of emotions

The newly started network for the study of emotions creates cross-subject and cross-faculty meetings for researchers who, based on different theories and methods, work with the study of emotions. It addresses researchers in the social sciences and humanities.

Painting of man comforting woman
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ReVisE Research Group

The ReVisE group explores how emergent technologies like IoT, AI, VR and MR can enhance educational practice through innovative visualizations and real-world applications. We collaborate with schools and industry partners across Sweden.

Illustration of three people in front of screens and diagrams.
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