Tag: Psychology

Esmé Weijun Wang discovers a new interpretation of faith while on two kindred pilgrimages: one to find an accurate medical diagnosis, one to a sacred site in New Mexico.

Diane Mehta tries to manage anxiety with meditation that requires her to discard all her memories.

More families are having only two children, leaving an entire culture to fade away: middleborns.

Apparently, feeling great about yourself does not improve your chances at success.

In Chromophobia, David Batchelor explores color theory and argues for the West’s historical fear of color.

Julie Beck digs deep into news silos, alternative facts, and cognitive dissonance.

In Vulture, Frank Guan, an avid gamer himself, digs deep into the appeal and addictive qualities of video games in an effort to understand the psychology that undergirds hard-core gaming — and whether it has an impact on or can predict our politics.

Merve Emre looks at the enduring visual power of Hermann Rorschach’s inkblots while reviewing Damion Searls’ new book on the German psychiatrist and his work.

Susan Read’s short fiction centers on a Kafka-esque interrogation in the back room of a coffee shop — you know, the one where they wear the green aprons — that’s a stinging indictment of the byzantine policies, procedures, and psychology of being a low wage employee.

How willpower — and its absence — turned from a moral and religious concept to a controversial scientific one.

This excerpt from Chuck Klosterman’s book “But What If We’re Wrong?” is nominally about football, and violence, but is also a prescient analysis of U.S. politics.

Impostor syndrome has been covered extensively in recent years. Its inverse, known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, is at least as pervasive: our innate tendency to confidently claim expertise in topics we know very little about, sometimes to embarrassing (if not tragic) results. Writing for Pacific Standard, David Dunning, who led the first studies of this […]

Writer Katherine Reynolds Lewis, in Mother Jones, examines the latest approaches to addressing children and discipline—most notably, that timeouts, negative consequences, and other traditional punishments might not be as effective in many cases as helping kids manage their own emotions. It’s based on “Collaborative and Proactive Solutions,” a program that was developed by psychologist Ross […]

Disgust has deep psychological roots, emerging early in a child’s development. Infants and young toddlers don’t feel grossed out by anything—diapers, Rozin observes, are there in part to stop a baby “from eating her shit.” In the young mind, curiosity and exploration often overpower any competing instincts. But, at around four years old, there seems to be a profound shift.

Earlier this week Mother Jones published a fascinating sampling from the CIA’s psychological profiles of various international figures. In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services (the WWII-era CIA predecessor) tasked a Harvard psychologist with drafting a profile of Hitler’s personality. Below is an excerpt, as compiled by Dave Gilson of Mother Jones: There is little disagreement among professional, or even among […]