Psychology

I just watched Nic Marks of the New Economics Foundation's recent TED talk, which I hope I can embed below.  Marks and I both appear have a problem with the amount of media attention that the…

When we last spoke about sex, we discussed the neurotransmitters involved in pleasure and attraction, namely dopamine and oxytocin. Now let's look a little deeper into the action of those…

An introduction: in the online autism community, there are a lot of heated debates. One of them is related to the nature of autism research. Some are insistent that more research focus on vaccines.…

Fear blinds us, immobilizes us, and makes fools of us. Scary stories abound on the internet, through emails, and in conversations, and dangers lurk in the dusty corners waiting to pounce on us and…

Look at a waterfall for 30 seconds. Now look at something stationary. The stationary object will appear to drift upwards. The same phantom movement is true after stepping off an airport walkway: if…

Despite being one of psychology's most memorable concepts and a genuinely good idea, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, immortalized in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" and later…

Semantic: "of, pertaining to, or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols: semantic change; semantic confusion." Pedantic: "overly concerned with minute details or formalisms,…

Does money make you happy?  Economists think so - the concept of 'utility' assumes that economic activity represents people consuming in ways that best supports their happiness.  And yet,…

Belief: Girls tend to hang out in smaller, more intimate groups than boys. Not really.   At least not by the time children reach the eighth grade, says a new Journal of Social and Personal…

Not long ago, many scientists had the belief that after the age of about three, the brain was pretty much fixed in function. You could imprint new memories and learn new skills, but that was about it…