Envy: it’s an unflattering, miserable emotion. And it’s universal. All of us, at some time or another, will experience that feeling of wanting what someone else has, and resenting them for having it. Of course, like all human emotions, envy has a purpose. It’s a tool for social comparison, one More
Given that we live in a consumer culture where you can get anything — a T-shirt, fancy whiskey, blood pressure medication — delivered to your door within hours, it is surprisingly difficult to buy things. Do you want jeans? What type of jeans do you want? Will those jeans look More
There is a certain rhythm to the swing of sibling relations. We resent our brothers and sisters in childhood. We support them in adulthood. We sue them after the reading of the will. The choreographer of this dance, as in so many others, is competition. When we lobby our parents More
What is the best way to deal with a loss? Loss is one of life’s most excruciating emotions, because it involves pain that to some degree will never go away—what you have lost will never come back. Often, people try to suppress their feelings, or close themselves off to situations More
The National Science Foundation has announced the NSF 2026 Idea Machine, a competition dedicated to investing in the cutting-edge scientific questions of the next decade. It is open to everyone and will identify the NSF’s next 10 Big Ideas for future funding. More
Inequality is one of the best predictors of conflict ever found. Except when it isn’t. Consider homicide in the United States. In 1990 and again in 2010, there was an impressive correlation between income inequality and the homicide rate. Among the states where inequality was high, so was homicide; and More
