Look around you. What do you see?
Other people going about their business? Rooms with tables and chairs? Nature with its sky, grass and trees? All that stuff, it's really there, right? Even if you were to disappear right now — poof! — the rest…
One psychologist claims that staying single gives people a chance to “live their best, most authentic and most meaningful life,” while also stating that the idea of a blissful marriage is entirely myth.
At the American Psychological Association’s…
A new study reports people who use profanities tend to be more honest and are less likely to be associated with deception or lying.
It’s long been associated with anger and coarseness but profanity can have another, more positive connotation. Psy…
Nope, it’s not the back aches or foot pain. If you can’t concentrate while working at a standing desk, it’s probably because your primal brain is subconsciously making eye-friends with all your coworkers.
We have evolved to do this because being …
A psychologist in Italy has figured out how to induce a drug-free altered state of consciousness by asking 20 volunteers to sit and stare into each other’s eyes for 10 minutes straight. Not only did the deceptively simple task bring on strange ‘out of …
You probably won't get to the end of this article. Everyone knows our attention spans are getting shorter. It's just obvious. Or is it?
In the always-connected world of social media, smartphones and hyperlinks in the middle of everything you read…
In humans’ mysterious journey to become intelligent, socializing creatures like no other in the animal world, one innovation played an essential role: religion.
That’s the theory that a preeminent evolutionary scientist is setting out to prove.
Survival is the Basic Instinct of most chemical or biological life forms. It is what makes flowers turn toward the sun. It is what makes birds fly to warmer climates. It is what makes turtles recede into their shells. It is what makes lions roar and ra…
For better or worse, many of us never forget high school: the unrequited romantic crushes, chronic embarrassment, desperate struggles for popularity, sexual awakening, parental pressure and, above all else, competition—social, athletic, academic.
Psychologists have a pretty good idea of what typically makes a human happy. Dancing delights us. Being in nature <…
Creativity is highly prized in Western society—much touted by cultures that claim to value individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit. But scratch beneath the surface, and it turns out that a lot of schools and businesses aren’t actually all that exc…
Do you think of yourself as a conformist or a non-conformist? If you are like most people, you probably believe that you are non-conformist enough to stand up to a group when you know you are right, but conformist enough to blend in with the rest of yo…
Picture this. It’s a Saturday morning, and autumn sunshine is falling through the blinds. You have a cup of coffee, a book, and an easy chair. Best of all: you’re alone. Your family, housemates, spouse, or children are elsewhere, and three uninterrupte…
Conventionally, we tend to use words like, “faith”, “spirituality”, “belief” and “religion” interchangeably and, generally speaking, there isn’t anything wrong with that.
But it may interest you to know that for those who study the psychology of…
You just need to find the people that know they are right and expect others to be wrong.
To paraphrase Men In Black's Agent K, a person is smart, but people are dumb, panicky and dangerous animals. Researchers at MIT and Princeton wanted to see i…
A growing body of research suggests that striving for happiness as an end in itself can be self-defeating. In fact, the more we pursue it, the less likely it is that we’ll actually experience psychological health and well-being—and the more likely that…
I'm dying of boredom,” complains the young wife, Yelena, in Chekhov’s 1897 play Uncle Vanya. “I don’t know what to do.” Of course, if Yelena were around today, we know how she’d alleviate her boredom: She’d pull out her smartphone and find something di…
“Write about the search,” he said. “That’s what’s fucking killing everyone.”
“The search?” Did he mean finding a new rent-controlled apartment that wasn’t possessed by fruit flies? Or perhaps a new startup job that boasted an extra one-zillionth …
The idea of empathy for all ignores the limits of human psychology.
The world seems to be getting more empathetic. Americans donate to charity at record rates. People feel the pain of suffering in geographically distant countries brought to our a…
A study co-led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) has found that people with genes for high educational achievement tend to marry, and have children with, people with similar DNA.
Humans generally do not choose their partners randomly, but ra…
From slavery to genocide, society has shown a terrifying ability to disregard the personhood of others. Here's why.
One of the most amazing court cases you probably have never heard of had come down to this. Standing Bear, the reluctant chief of …
In the real world, people don't need heroes or rescue: They need systemic solutions to racism, patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism. But the seductive myth of the savior complex all too often leads us astray, as Jordan Flaherty shows in .
Cou…
Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people’s buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexi…
Evil, it can seem, is all around us. Hitler. The Rwandan genocide. Ted Bundy. Every time you read the news or watch television, bad behaviour that causes harm is on display.
These days, the word ‘evil’ has religious connotations. It’s tied up wi…