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Why Are People So Annoying?
It’s human nature to want other people to think well of us. And indeed we are often called upon to put our best foot forward—highlighting our accomplishments and character traits in job interviews and on
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You Are Built to Be Kind
New York Magazine: Let’s take a few minutes this dreary winter Wednesday to remind ourselves that people aren’t always the worst. In a neat little animated video published yesterday by the University of California, Berkeley
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The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling
The Atlantic: When an English archaeologist named George Smith was 31 years old, he became enchanted with an ancient tablet in the British Museum. Years earlier, in 1845, when Smith was only a five-year-old boy
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Is Anybody Watching My Do-Gooding?
Slate: Hero means everything and nothing. It encompasses the firefighters who rushed into the burning twin towers, long-distance runners who compete through chronic disease, and the wag on Twitter who makes a point you agree with. The highly
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The Dark Side of Empathy
Pacific Standard: Public figures from President Obama to Neil deGrasse Tyson have suggested a lack of empathy is one of our species’ fundamental problems. “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing
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Schadenfreude in Gaza
The Washington Post: Joshua Tucker: The following is a guest post from social psychologists Jay Van Bavel (New York University) and Mina Cikara (Harvard University) ***** As the Gaza-Israel conflict began escalating last month, there were widely circulated reports that Israeli
