Why You Should Hold It
When Prime Minister David Cameron is giving an important speech, or in the midst of difficult negotiations, he relies on a simple mental trick known as the full bladder technique. The name is not a...
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The Upside of a Stressful Childhood
Everyone knows that chronic stress is dangerous, especially for the developing brain. It prunes dendrites and inhibits the birth of new neurons. It shrinks the hippocampus, swells the amygdala and can...
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The Root of Wisdom: Why Old People Learn Better
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates defines the essence of wisdom. He makes his case by comparison, arguing that wisdom is ultimately an awareness of ignorance. The wise man is not the one who always gets it...
View ArticleWhen Should Children Start Kindergarten?
One of the fundamental challenges of parenting is that the practice is also the performance; childcare is all about learning on the job. The baby is born, a lump of need, and we’re expected to keep her...
View ArticleThe Louis-Schmeling Paradox
Why do we go to sporting events?The reasons to stay home are obvious. Here’s my list, in mostly random order: a beer costs $12, the view is better from my couch, die-hard fans can be scary, the price...
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Do Genes Predict Intelligence? In America, It Depends on Your Class
There’s a longstanding academic debate about the genetics of intelligence. On the one side is the “hereditarian” camp, which cites a vast amount of research showing a strong link between genes and...
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The Danger of Safety Equipment
My car is a safety braggart. When I glance at the dashboard, there’s a cluster of glowing orange lights, reminding me of all the smart technology designed to save me from my stupid mistakes. Airbags,...
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The Psychology of 'Making A Murderer'
Roughly ten hours into Making a Murderer, a Netflix documentary about the murder trial of Steven Avery, his defense lawyer Dean Strang delivers the basic thesis of the show:“The forces that caused that...
View ArticleThe Fastest Way To Learn
Practice makes perfect: One of those clichés that gets endlessly trotted out, told to children at the piano and point guards shooting from behind the arc. It applies to multiplication tables and...
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Money, Pain, Death
Last December, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper in PNAS highlighting a disturbing trend: more middle-aged white Americans are dying. In particular, whites between the ages of...
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The Curious Robot
Curiosity is the strangest mental state. The mind usually craves certainty; being right feels nice; mystery is frustrating. But curiosity pushes back against these lesser wants, compelling us to seek...
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Does Stress Cause Early Puberty?
The arrival of puberty is a bodily event influenced by psychological forces. The most potent of these forces is stress: decades of research have demonstrated that a stressful childhood accelerates...
View ArticleIs Tanking An Effective Strategy in the NBA?
In his farewell manifesto, former Philadelphia 76ers General Manager Sam Hinkie spends 13 pages explaining away the dismal performance of his team, which has gone 47-199 over the last three seasons....
View ArticleThe Importance of Learning How to Fail
“An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.” -Niels BohrCarol Dweck has devoted her career to studying how our...
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Did "Clean" Water Increase the Murder Rate?
The construction of public waterworks across the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was one of the great infrastructure investments in American history. As David Cutler and Grant...
View ArticleThe Nordic Paradox
By virtually every measure, the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - are a paragon of gender equality. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at the wage gap or political...
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What Can Toilet Paper Teach Us About Poverty?
“Costco is where you go broke saving money.”-My UncleThe fundamental paradox of big box stores is that the only way to save money is to spend lots of it. Want to get a discount on that shampoo? Here's...
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How Magicians Make You Stupid
The egg bag magic trick is simple enough. A magician produces an egg and places it in a cloth bag. Then, the magician uses some poor sleight of hand, pretending to hide the egg in his armpit. When the...
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The Overview Effect
After six weeks in orbit, circling the earth in a claustrophobic space station, the three-person crew of Skylab 4 decided to go on a strike. For 24 hours, the astronauts refused to work, and even...
View ArticleThe Power of Family Memory
In a famous series of studies conducted in the 1980s, the psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley gave parents a new variable to worry about: the number of words they speak to their children....
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