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The Iowa Caucuses and the Psychology of Impatience
If there’s one thing a democracy needs to get right, it’s an election. And, in that respect, Iowa failed Monday night. Due to an apparent software problem, the nation did not get the results of
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Why William and Kate Are a ‘Fairy Tale’ but Harry and Meghan Are ‘Couple Goals’
The phrase fairy tale always seems to hover in the air whenever a marriage takes place within the English monarchy. And indeed, the three most high-profile royal weddings in modern history—those of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, Prince William
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How Negativity Can Kill a Relationship
There’s an elegant symmetry to traditional wedding vows: for better or for worse. But love is not symmetrical, and most of us don’t realize how lopsided it can be. The worse matters far more than
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Ricky Gervais teaches Hollywood what speaking truth to power really means
If you had “host Ricky Gervais becomes a conservative darling” in your office Golden Globes pool, congratulations, because you must have won a bundle. The rest of us will continue our slow, astonished blink as
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How to avoid the traps that produce loneliness and isolation
“Hell is other people,” wrote the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1944 play “No Exit.” Sartre was wrong. Hell is the lack of other people, and according to the health-insurance company Cigna, loneliness and
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Spoiler Alert! The Psychology Of Surprise Endings
Writers and filmmakers hoping to hoodwink their fans with plot twists have long known what cognitive scientists know: All of us have blind spots in the way we assess the world. We get distracted. We