Thank You For Reading
Welcome to my blog. Thank you for reading. I hope this will be a place where I can write about scientific research that interests me.I also hope this blog can be a small step towards regaining the...
View ArticleWhy Do We Watch Sports?
Why do we watch sports? It's a simple question with a complicated answer. Sports are a huge entertainment business – the NFL alone generates at least $7 billion a year in television revenue – so it’s...
View ArticleMaterialism and Its Discontents
“To do or to have?” That Hamlet-like question is the title of a scientific paper by Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich, published several years ago in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology....
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A Science of Self-Reports?
In 1975, the psychologists Stephen West and T. Jan Brown conducted an investigation into the factors that made people more likely to help a stranger. What made their study unique is that they conducted...
View ArticleThe Ritual Effect
Stella Artois is an old beer with a long history. The original brewery (Den Hoorn) was founded in 1336 in Leuven, Belgium. In 1717, Sebastian Artois bought the brewery and promptly renamed it after...
View ArticleCohesion, PTSD and War
I’ve been reading Head Strong, an excellent new book by Michael D. Matthews, a professor of engineering psychology at West Point. The book describes the history and future of military psychology, from...
View ArticleThe Violence of the Pass
Football is going to change. That much is clear. The correlation between the impacts sustained on the football field and the brain damage of players is no longer just a correlation: it’s starting to...
View ArticlePity the Fish
Consider the lobster; pity the fish. In his justly celebrated Gourmet essay, David Foster Wallace argued that the lobster was not a mindless invertebrate, but rather a creature capable of feeling,...
View ArticleThe Skin Is A Social Organ
Your body is covered in hairy skin.* Below the surface of this skin are wispy sensory nerves known as a C-fiber tactile afferents, or CTs. These nerves are designed to respond to gentle contact - even...
View Article"A Wandering Mind Is An Unhappy Mind"
Last year, in an appearance on the Conan O’Brien show, the comedian Louis C.K. riffed on smartphones and the burden of human consciousness:"That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to...
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The Too-Much-Talent Effect
A few years ago, the psychologists Adam Galinsky and Roderick Swaab began working on a study that looked at the relationship between national levels of egalitarianism – the belief that everyone...
View ArticleThe Purpose Driven Life
Viktor Frankl was trained as a psychiatrist in Vienna in the early 1930s, during the peak of Freud’s influence. He internalized the great man’s theories, writing at one point that “all spiritual...
View ArticleCommunism, Inequality, Dishonesty
Dan Ariely has been trying, for years, to find evidence that different cultures give rise to different levels of dishonesty. It's an attractive hypothesis – “It seems like it should be true,” Ariely...
View ArticleThe Tragedy of Leaded Gas
In December 1973, the EPA issued new regulations governing the use of lead in gasoline. These rules, authorized as part of the Clean Air Act and signed into law by President Nixon, were subject to...
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The Draw-A-Person Test
Imagine a world where intelligence is measured like this:A child sits down at a desk. She is given a piece of paper and a crayon. Then, she is asked to draw a picture of a boy or girl. “Do the best...
View ArticleAre You Paying Attention?
Thank you for participating in my psychology experiment on decision-making. Please read the instructions below:Most modern theories of decision-making recognize the fact that decisions do not take...
View ArticleThe Spell of Art
In the preface to Dave Eggers' 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he makes the reader a generous offer. If we are bothered by the dark truth of the work - it is a book set in...
View ArticleLearning To Be Alone
By any reasonable standard, human beings are born way too soon, thrust into a world for which we are not ready. Not even close.The strange timing of our birth reflects the tradeoffs of biology. Humans...
View ArticleThe Virtues of Hunger
My kitchen cupboards are filled with Trader Joe’s snacks that I bought while shopping on an empty stomach. Chocolate edamame. Pumpkin spiced pumpkin seeds. Kale chips. Lentil chips. Veggie puffs. A...
View ArticleThe Educational Benefits of Purpose
What are the biggest impediments for teachers in the classroom? According to a recent national survey, the most frequently cited problem was “students’ lack of interest in learning.” (Among teachers in...
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