What’s behind the confidence of the incompetent? This suddenly popular psychological phenomenon.
You may have witnessed this scene at work, while socializing with friends or over a holiday dinner with extended family… More
Knowledge
Teaching Current Directions in Psychological Science
Featured Articles: “Understanding Mind From Matter: What Does Prehistoric Farming Say About Your Prefrontal Cortex?” and “To Err Is Human: The Psychological Science of Voting Mistakes”… More
The Factors That Foster Wise Reasoning
Empirical research on wisdom suggests that it’s not so much that some people simply possess wisdom and others lack it, but that our ability to reason wisely depends on a variety of external factors… More
Imagining Dialogue Can Boost Critical Thinking
Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning when thinking about that issue… More
Uncommon Insights Into Common Knowledge
APS William James Fellow Steven A. Pinker provides a tour through recent research on the mechanics of common knowledge — and its centrality to everyday life… More
The Cognitive Upside of Aging
Big Data involving thousands and thousands of participants is enabling researchers to track the development of different cognitive skills across the lifespan with increasing accuracy. And the results of these studies bring light to some surprising — and perhaps heartening — findings about the aging brain… More