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What You Have in Common With a Pigeon and Why It’s Causing Problems for You
Today nearly everyone in America has become just as silly. People are “exactly like the pigeons,” says Peter Balsam, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. Because, he says, we carry around a device that
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8 Ways to Become a Nicer Person
Kids are taught that being nice means using magic words like “please” and “thank you,” sharing with friends, and taking turns without complaint. Then they grow up and enter a world where it’s normal to
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Willpower Doesn’t Work. This Does
There is a children’s story I used to read to my daughters when they were 3 and 4 years old. It comes from Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” series and involves a big batch of
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Here’s How to Make Resolutions Stick, According to a Behavior Change Scientist
The Harry Potter audiobooks helped Katy Milkman make a foundational discovery about exercise behavior. A Harvard graduate student at the time, she was struggling to work out. Once a varsity tennis player, she no longer had
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Why We Struggle to Say No—And How to Get Better at It
As children many of us are taught that being “good” means being obedient: doing what we’re told by parents, teachers and authority figures. But that conditioning can make it incredibly difficult to speak up when
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Chimps Can Weigh Evidence and Update Their Beliefs Like Humans Do
… Most impressively, the animals even accounted for clues that undermined earlier evidence. If they heard something bouncing around inside box 1, they would assume, at first, that it was an apple—but then the experimenter
