Writing Negative Reviews is Good for Your Health, and Other Surprising Discoveries
Rant and let go
Writing negative customer reviews online is good for your health, so long as your reviews are objective and evenhanded, according to Columbia business professor Vicki Morwitz and Alisa Wu ’24BUS. Their research shows that airing frustrations after a bad shopping experience provides not only emotional relief but measurable physiological benefits.
Hey, how’d I get here?
You almost certainly possess memories from infancy that you can’t retrieve, possibly because babies' brains are not yet capable of storing memories in an organized fashion, according to new research by Columbia postdoctoral researcher Tristan Yates.
Life’s code, repurposed
Columbia engineers led by Oleg Gang have found a way to build nanomaterials out of DNA. The DNA they use is synthesized, not from living organisms, but it can assemble itself into extremely strong, flexible three-dimensional structures with applications ranging from medicine to electronics.
Soft-serve therapy
Using yogurt byproducts, Columbia biomedical engineers led by Santiago Correa have developed an injectable gel that mimics living tissue and supports healing. In mice, the gel promoted blood-vessel growth and reduced inflammation, essential steps in tissue recovery.
AI’s sinking street cred
Researchers at Columbia Journalism School report that all major AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and Gemini, continue to be plagued with serious problems, including a propensity to fabricate answers. Premium chatbots are in some ways more misleading than their free counterparts, the authors write, because they respond more confidently even when wrong.
When phone fixation spells trouble
A new Columbia study finds that it’s not how many hours kids spend on their phones but how compulsively they use them that’s linked to mental-health problems. Tracking 4,300 children over four years, the researchers found that nearly half of young people show signs of screen addiction — avoiding activities and feeling distressed without their devices — and that they are two to three times more likely to experience suicidal thoughts.
