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Behavioral Health

Side Gigs for Good, part three
Two people sitting on an L-shaped couch amidst four pillows. The one on the right is holding a clipboard.

Altagracia Felix (right) is a financial coordinator for the Annenberg School for Communication, but she also has a side gig as a money coach. Her aim is to help “disrupt the cycle of poverty and struggle,” she says. (Image: Courtesy of Altagracia Felix)

Side Gigs for Good, part three

The final 2019 installment in our series highlighting impactful work Penn faculty and staff do.

Katherine Unger Baillie , Michele W. Berger

Do smartphones and social media lead to adolescent suicide?
Two teens lay on couch with smartphones looking bored

Do smartphones and social media lead to adolescent suicide?

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Daniel Romer argues that the tendency to correlate uptick in suicides and social media is not backed by data. Instead, he argues the economic recession may be to blame.

Penn Today Staff

Math, stereotypes, and social belonging
person looks perplexed holding a pencil staring into middle distancw with chalkboard behind them with math equations.

Math, stereotypes, and social belonging

Philip Gressman, professor of mathematics, discusses how stereotype threat can affect student performance in math, and how social belonging can curb it.

Penn Today Staff

Eating disorders grow more prevalent and skew younger
closeup of a person's hands cutting a single pea with a fork and knife on a dinner plate

Eating disorders grow more prevalent and skew younger

Experts say a team approach between clinicians and those close to the individual are necessary to properly address an eating disorder, and still, relapses are a common occurrence.

Penn Today Staff

‘13 Reasons Why’ and media effects on suicide
Forlorn teen sits on a couch pointing a television remote control.

‘13 Reasons Why’ and media effects on suicide

in a recent study, researchers estimated that an additional 195 suicide deaths among 10- to 17-year-olds occurred in the nine months after the 2017 release of the first season of the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why.”

Penn Today Staff

The key to keeping your employees happy
Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade details her research on emotional contagion with text bubbles on a white board behind her.

Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade details her research on emotional contagion. (Image: Wharton Magazine)

The key to keeping your employees happy

Moods, emotions, even smiles are some of the emotional contagions Wharton professor Sigal Barsade cites as what are passed along throughout the workplace, making the professional environment either more pleasant or more unhappy.

Penn Today Staff

Tweets from Twitter users could predict loneliness
Person wearing a hoodie sits on a structural beam alone in an isolated area holding a smartphone.

Tweets from Twitter users could predict loneliness

By identifying similar themes across tweets, researchers are uncovering markers that could be used to predict loneliness, something that could lead to depression, heart disease, and dementia.

Penn Today Staff

What factors predict success?
A person sitting at a desk covered in papers, with a computer screen in the background. Four people are blurry, in the foreground. They are all engaged in conversation.

The findings of this latest work add to the canon of overall knowledge about what factors predict success. They also strengthen Duckworth’s original theories about grit and, at the same time, highlight other attributes key to long-term achievement.

What factors predict success?

New research from Angela Duckworth and colleagues finds that characteristics beyond intelligence influence long-term achievement.

Michele W. Berger

The culture of coworking spaces
Person sitting at a table with an open book, a picture, glasses, a coffee cup and wearing headphones looking at a cellphone. Three people are in the background.

The culture of coworking spaces

As Penn sociologist David Grazian discovered through hundreds of hours of fieldwork, despite today’s digital work-anywhere economy, having a physical place to conduct business still matters.

Michele W. Berger

Physicians, social responsibility, and sexual assault survivors
Person in a lab coat sitting on a wooden bench outside.

Florencia Greer Polite is an associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Physicians, social responsibility, and sexual assault survivors

Penn Medicine’s Florencia Greer Polite wants doctors to take a more proactive approach to conversations with their patients about consent and sexual abuse.

Michele W. Berger