Are Toddlers Noble Savages?
The bluestreak cleaner wrasse is a trusting fish. When a large predator swims into its cleaning station, the tiny wrasse will often enter the gills and mouth of the “client,” picking off ectoparasites,...
View ArticleWhy Dieting Is So Hard
New year, new you. For many people, a new you really means a new diet, shorn of white carbs, fried foods and ice cream. (Losing weight is, by far, the most popular New Year’s resolution.) Alas, the new...
View ArticleHow To Convince People They're Criminals
In November 1988, Christopher Ochoa was interrogated by police about the brutal rape and murder of Nancy DePriest at a Pizza Hut in Austin, Texas. He was questioned for nearly twelve hours. The cops...
View ArticleWhat Your Mother Has To Do With Your Lover
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you."-Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”The poem...
View ArticleThe Sabermetrics of Effort
The fundamental premise of Moneyball is that the labor market of sports is inefficient, and that many teams systematically undervalue particular athletic skills that help them win. While these skills...
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How Fast Is Usain Bolt?
On the night of August 16, 2009, during the 100 meter final at the 2009 World Championships, Usain Bolt ran faster than any other human being has ever run before. He shattered his previous world record...
View ArticleThe Power of Redemption Stories
The story of redemption is as American as apple pie. It’s there in the Autobiography of Ben Franklin – he went from being a fugitive teen in Philadelphia to the founder of a nation - and the pulp...
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Should Cell Phones Be Banned In Cars?
The other day I was talking on the phone, handsfree, while driving a car. I was trying to avoid rush hour traffic, traveling on some unfamiliar side streets. Out of nowhere I hear a loud horn, followed...
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Can People Change? The Case of Don Draper
Can people change? That is the question, it seems to me, at the dark heart of Mad Men. We’ve spent eight years watching Don Draper try to become a better man. He wants to drink less and swim more. He...
View ArticleDoes the Science of Self-Control Diminish Our Self-Control?
In 1998, the psychologist Roy Baumeister introduced the “strength” model of self-control. It’s a slightly misleading name, since the model attempts to describe the weakness of the will, why people so...
View ArticleWhy Do Married Men Make More Money?
In 1979, Martha Hill, a researcher at the University of Michigan, observed a strange fact about married men: they make a lot more money, at least compared to their unmarried peers. (According to Hill’s...
View ArticleThe Strange Allure of Almost Winning
In Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, the cultural anthropologist Natasha Dow Schull describes the extensive use of the “near miss” effect in slot machines. The effect exists when...
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Is Talk Therapy Getting Less Effective?
In the late 1950s, when Aaron Beck was a young psychoanalyst at the University of Pennsylvania, he practiced classic Freudian analysis. The goal of therapy, he believed, was to give voice to the...
View ArticleThe Triumph of Defensive Strategy
One of the most useful measurements of modern sabermetrics is Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Pioneered in baseball, the statistic attempts to calculate the total number of additional wins generated by a...
View ArticleIs This Why Love Increases Lifespan?
In 1858, William Farr, a physician working for the General Register Office in the British government, conducted an analysis of the health benefits of marriage. After reviewing the death statistics of...
View ArticleThe Corrupting Comforts of Power
The psychology of power is defined by two long-standing mysteries.The first is why people are so desperate to become powerful. Although power comes with plenty of spoils, it’s also extremely stressful....
View ArticleHow Does Mindfulness Work?
In the summer of 1978, Ellen Langer published a radical sentence in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It’s a line that’s easy to overlook, as it appears in the middle of the first page,...
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Can Tetris Help Us Cope With Traumatic Memories?
In a famous passage in Theatetus, Plato compares human memory to a wax tablet: Whenever we wish to remember anything we see or hear or think of in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions...
View ArticleThe Best Way To Increase Voter Turnout
“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”-Alexis de TocquevilleWhy don’t more Americans vote? In the last midterm election, only...
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Quality, Quantity, Creativity
There are two competing narratives about the current television landscape. The first is that we’re living through a golden age of scripted shows. From The Sopranos to Transparent, Breaking Bad to The...
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