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Interpreting 5 Ancient Constellations Across Cultures
Civilizations come and go, with some lasting mere decades while others endure for millennia. But what rarely changes, at least on human timescales, are the stars above us. Nonetheless, past cultures have often connected the dots of various stars in different ways — representing everything from the myths of creation to legendary figures and godlike animals, depending on the viewer. Some of these cultural references go back thousands of years, and are possibly even older. They represent early examples of humanity’s preoccupation with symbolism in the world around us, as well as how even vastly different cultures have sometimes interpreted the sky in similar ways.
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The Science of Why You Have Great Ideas in the Shower
If you’ve ever emerged from the shower or returned from walking your dog with a clever idea or a solution to a problem you’d been struggling with, it may not be a fluke. Rather than constantly grinding away at a problem or desperately seeking a flash of inspiration, research from the last 15 years suggests that people may be more likely to have creative breakthroughs or epiphanies when they’re doing a habitual task that doesn’t require much thought—an activity in which you’re basically on autopilot. This lets your mind wander or engage in spontaneous cognition or “stream of consciousness” thinking, which experts believe helps retrieve unusual memories and generate new ideas.
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Perfectionism Is a Pathology, Not a Character Strength
We all know perfectionism as a quality we’re meant to be proud of, especially in professional settings. Society frames the drive to be perfect as a sign of a competent and ambitious individual. The word is synonymous with excellence. But emerging research in psychological science suggests that we pay a high price for our pursuit of perfection. Here are three ways perfectionism leaves us and our minds susceptible to psychological damage. ...
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Underweight and Overexposed: How Women’s Perceptions of Thinness Are Distorted
Recent research suggests that women’s judgments about other women’s bodies can be biased by an overrepresentation of thinness. Sean Devine explains these findings and elaborates on their implications for policy.
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The August Collection: Attitude Changes, Cognition in Lemurs, and Much More
In this episode of Under the Cortex, APS’s Ludmila Nunes and Andy DeSoto discuss five recent articles that examined cognitive control in lemurs, ADHD, how attitudes and biases changed in the last decade, and much more.
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The Psychology of Inspiring Everyday Climate Action
WHEN KIMBERLY NICHOLAS, a sustainability scientist at Lund University in Sweden, decided that she needed to confront the climate effects of her frequent flying, she took a scientist’s approach. She spent hours making meticulous spreadsheets comparing the costs of all the modes of transport she might take—in terms of time, finances, and emissions—and when she finished, she still didn’t know what the right choice was. She had, she says, “analysis paralysis.” In the end, the spreadsheets were for naught. Instead, what it took for her to make a change was an hour-long conversation with a friend who had himself stopped flying.