Humans Are Pretty Lousy Lie Detectors

Member/Author: Christiane Gelitz On television, it all looks so simple. For a fraction of a second, the suspect raises the corner of his mouth. He is happy because he thinks the investigators are wrong about where he planted the bomb. But when his interrogator mentions the correct place, the terrorist’s More

What to Do When You Can’t Catch a Break

We’ve all had one of those weeks: Your car breaks down, you get in trouble at work, you spill wine on an expensive dress, a family member gets sick. Sometimes those weeks turn into months or even years, and you begin to wonder if the universe is out to get More

‘I’m Extremely Controversial’: the Psychologist Rethinking Human Emotion

In early March, as the world began to realise that coronavirus wasn’t going to go quietly, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett was thousands of miles away from home. “I went to New Zealand because I was getting an honorary degree,” she tells me over the phone from lockdown in Newton, a leafy More

Why Facing Our Feelings is Essential for Tackling Our Climate Crisis

Thirty years ago, I sat in a darkened lecture hall listening to what was happening to our Earth because of the decisions people had made. Climate change, toxic contamination, species loss, forest fires, soil depletion: it was a litany of all the ways humans had gone very wrong. At least, that’s More

Testosterone May Dampen Police Recruits’ Emotional Control

A study involving Dutch Police Academy recruits suggests that aggressive individuals may be more sensitive to the effects of testosterone when faced with emotionally charged situations. More