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Most of us could give a rough answer if asked how we feel about ourselves. But the self-esteem people report on a questionnaire, what psychologists call explicit self-esteem, does not always match the faster, more automatic self-regard that surfaces in split-second reactions. A study from Patrycja Korzeniowska, Kun Guo and Petra Pollux at the University of Lincoln suggests this second, implicit layer plays a notable role in how readily we detect rejection in other people's fa

Parents often say a child changes everything about their relationship. A recent study in Personality and Individual Differences suggests one change may track something parents cannot choose, namely whether they have a son or a daughter. Across three datasets, fathers of daughters showed stronger commitment and attachment to their child's mother than fathers of sons did. Mothers showed no comparable difference. Krystal Duarte, Kristina Durante and colleagues analysed data from

Dr Belén López-Pérez studies how we shape each other's emotions. Her own career story, full of accidental discoveries, near-misses, and hard-won resilience, turns out to be a brilliant illustration of her own research. Most people who become academic psychologists will tell you they always wanted to understand the human mind. Belén López-Pérez is not most people. "I ended up doing psychology accidentally," she says. The now-lecturer at the University of Manchester had spent