A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
We all know what “loneliness” means, but defining it in a precise way gets a little tricky. For starters, being lonely isn’t exactly the same as being alone. And loneliness isn’t quite the same as social isolation either. When you
If there’s one thing people never lack, it’s biases in how we think. One of these biases is what psychologists call the false consensus effect, where people tend to overestimate the extent to which other people share their views. To
You need a lot of things to start a business. A good idea, the skills to turn that idea into reality, and some cold, hard cash. Increasingly, psychologists who study entrepreneurship believe you need the right mindset too. They talk
When you were in middle school, you could probably name without having to think who the “class clown” was. If you’re a middle school teacher, bless your heart, you can probably do the same. It’s not hard to know who
I’ve written about perfectionism several times on here before, and to be honest, I’ve never really said anything nice about it. As I’ve pointed out, perfectionism has been implicated in everything from insomnia to binge eating to lower resilience. Basically,
That’s right! When you woke up yesterday I bet you didn’t know your cognitive future hinged on whether you’d have a good day! I’m exaggerating, of course. But there really is a new study out showing that people’s evaluations of
Maybe you’ve heard that social media usage is linked to lower life satisfaction. But what does that mean? There are multiple ways social media and life satisfaction could be “linked”: People with higher life satisfaction use social media less than
Shoplifting is a behavior that, besides being ethically questionable, doesn’t seem like a very good risk-reward trade-off. Naturally, when psychologists see people engaged in that kind of activity, they ask: why? As it turns out, not everyone who shoplifts does
For centuries, people have puzzled over the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic expression. In recent years, psychology researchers have joined in with their own theories, even debating fundamental questions such as whether Mona Lisa’s facial expression indicates happiness or sadness. The latest
Do you have a strong, automatic reaction when you encounter a situation that’s unfair? Everyone has a sense of what’s fair and what’s not, but that sense seems to be more pronounced in some people than others. And a new
