The New York Times: Disgust is the Cinderella of emotions. While fear, sadness and anger, its nasty, flashy sisters, have drawn the rapt attention of psychologists, poor disgust has been hidden away in a corner, left to muck around in the ashes. No longer. Disgust is having its moment in More
The New York Times: Did you hear the one about the Texan at his first Passover Seder? He was mightily impressed with the soup. “These matzo balls sure are delicious, ma’am,” he told his hostess. “What other parts of the matzo do y’all cook with?” This old joke came to More
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Kendall J. Eskine and Natalie A. Kacinik from the City University of New York present their research on “Feeling Moved by Art.” “The goal of this research was to investigate which More
The New York Times: Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve. Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you weren’t an More
The vast majority of the world’s 7 billion people practice some kind of religion, ranging from massive worldwide churches to obscure spiritual traditions and local sects. Nobody really knows how many religions there are on the planet, but whatever the number, there are at least that many theories about why More
The New York Times: Why envy? It seems to be the most useless of the deadly sins: excruciating to experience, shameful to admit, bereft of immediate pleasure or long-term benefits. To an evolutionary psychologist, there’s a certain logic to seducing thy neighbor’s wife or stealing his goods, but what’s the More
