Why retirement can expose an imbalance in long-standing friendships
My grandmother knew everyone's blood type.
Relationships & Society
Relationships, identity and social behaviour, including how institutions and technologies reshape the way people live together.
625 articles · Relationships & Society
Why some people feel comfortable eating alone in public
"Table seven, one cover." That was the line that used to make my floor staff sigh.
Why some people remain kind after difficult experiences
Some of the gentlest people I have ever met had lives that would flatten most of us.
In a 1978 study of major lottery winners, researchers found that within about a…
Philip Brickman's 1978 Northwestern study tracked 22 Illinois lottery winners and found that within a year, they rated ordinary pleasures — coffee, conversation, a good meal — lower than people who had never won. The finding launched the concept of the hedonic treadmill.
People who own one really good coat and wear it for fifteen years aren’t frugal…
Wearing the same excellent coat for fifteen years isn't frugality — it's a quiet psychological strategy. When possessions are few and cared for, they accumulate a kind of dignity that a full closet, with all its churn and optionality, structurally cannot produce.
Adults with no close friends are not necessarily incapable of intimacy…
An adult can be personable, attentive and capable of affection while still having nobody they would call a close friend.
Why resilience does not require staying positive or recovering immediately
Resilience is often misread as speed.
Why some adults reach their 60s with few close friends
A person can reach their 60s with only a few close friends for reasons that have little to do with being bad at relationships.
Across 1,252 people in 10 studies, researchers found that even a five-minute dose…
How little time outdoors does it take to feel better?
A modern paraphrase of Epictetus: It is not what happens to you, but how you react…
The numbers do not care how hard you work.
Why some people go years without a close friend
There's a certain kind of person you learn to spot if you've ever run a room full of tables.
Why loneliness can grow in later life even for people who spent decades helping…
We've got a lazy story we tell about lonely old people.