When it comes to the “right brain vs. left brain” discussion, research has shown us just how communicative the hemispheres of our brain actually are. Unless the connection between them is physically severed, information zips across the hemispheres during the vast majority of tasks that our brains accomplish every second. […]
There is always some minutia about important events that we don’t know, and this opens the door to conspiracy thinking. We fill the gaps in our knowledge with notions that comfort us by offering the illusion of certainty. Like superstitious thinking, we fulfill a basic psychological need with an illusion of control. […]
There are several tricks we use to help us confirm or reaffirm a potential possibility when we can’t know all the facts. […]
What Makes People Happy? Life circumstances have much less of an impact on how happy you are than most people imagine. In fact, only about 10 percent of your happiness is due to your life circumstances […]
Does money make people happy? Research suggests that most of the things that people believe make them happy really won’t—at least not in the long run. […]
Why Are Our Dreams So Weird? Studies show that there is continuity between people’s dreams and their waking lives. But is the answer so simple? […]
Why do we dream? Take a look at three modern theories that suggest dreams are functional—that they do something useful for our well-being. […]
Why do we dream? Researchers suggest that we should first distinguish between brain activity that occurs during REM sleep and the actual content of dreams. […]
But at a casino, you don’t know what your reward will be, or even if you’ll get one. In fact, most of the time, you get nothing at all. But that kind of reinforcement, the “sometimes-surprise” schedule, reinforces the behavior even more effectively. Think about people pumping money into slot machines, only to get occasional, unpredictable rewards. […]
If most of us think of humanity as good, fair, and peace-loving, then why is there so much conflict and prejudice out there? Tapping into a series of intriguing studies and experiments, Professor Leary reveals the roots of our behavioral tendency to view the world in an “Us versus Them” context.
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