Psychology suggests we don’t reason toward truth so much as defend what we already…
In 1998, a Tufts psychologist named Raymond Nickerson published a long review article pulling together decades of scattered experiments under one heading.
Relationships & Society
Relationships, identity and social behaviour, including how institutions and technologies reshape the way people live together.
625 articles · Relationships & Society
Psychology suggests memory is not a recording but a story we rebuild each time: in…
Picture a memory you are sure of.
Chasing happiness can be the thing that scares it off: research suggests those who…
What follows is reading and reflection on published psychology research, not advice.
Psychology says one cruel remark can drown out many kind ones: across love, money…
Give someone five compliments and one insult in the same afternoon, and the insult is what they carry home.
Why a strong sense of self can keep changing across adulthood
We're sold a story about identity that runs like a detective film.
What pushing in a chair can show about everyday consideration
Last week I watched a bloke in a near-empty café stand up, sling his bag over one shoulder, and then, before he walked out, quietly slide his chair back under the table.
The ‘spotlight effect’ was measured at Cornell in 2000, where students wearing an…
In 1996, Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich sent students into a room wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt and measured a gap that would reshape how psychologists think about self-consciousness: wearers guessed 46 per cent of observers noticed the shirt. The real number was 23 per cent.
Adults who prefer physical books aren’t necessarily romanticizing the past—they’re…
A physical book makes a narrow promise.
Why some people keep a paper calendar beside their phone
There is a particular kind of desk that looks as if it belongs to two eras at once.
A TED talk watched tens of millions of times promised that standing like a…
Stand like a superhero for two minutes before a job interview, and your body chemistry shifts to make you braver.
Eight reasons some people still prefer writing on paper
There is an oddly revealing moment in modern life: someone needs to remember something, reaches past the phone already in their hand, and looks for a pen.
Marcus Aurelius warned that the desire to be remembered was pointless because both…
Marcus Aurelius wrote one of his clearest warnings about ambition in the fourth book of the notes now called Meditations.