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Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
In its earliest decades, the United States was celebrated for its citizens’ extroversion. Americans weren’t just setting out to build new churches and new cities. Their associations were, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “of a
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How Are You, Really?
We know we should get a physical exam every year; we have annual reviews at work; some couples even do periodic relationship audits. And yet many of us don’t regularly check in with our emotional
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How to Actually Catch a Liar, According to the New Science of Lie Detection
We naturally detect lies all the time. It could be a dip in our partner’s voice alerting us to the fact that they’re concealing their emotions; a child’s eyes drifting back to the drawer containing
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Feeling Stuck? Here Are 5 Ways to Jumpstart Your Life.
From the outside, it looked as though Adam Alter was gliding along. At 28, he had earned a doctorate in psychology from Princeton and soon afterward landed a job as a tenure-track professor at the
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Chicken Littles Are Ruining America
Sometime around 1970, the American personality changed. In prior decades, people tended to define themselves according to the social roles they played: I’m a farmer, teacher, housewife, priest. But then a more individualistic culture took
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For Gen Z, an Age-Old Question: Who Pays for Dates?
During a recent dinner at a cozy bar in Upper Manhattan, I was confronted with an age-old question about gender norms. Over bowls of ramen and sips of gin cocktails, my date and I got