Psychology
AI can now read your emotional state in a shop, adapt what it shows you in real…
Part of my research involves teaching machines to read emotion from faces, voices, and text.
Human Behaviour
Calorie tracking can support weight management, but its psychological effects vary
Food tracking can be useful for some people and stressful for others. A small study does not show that calorie counting trains the nervous system into hypervigilance.
Human Behaviour
Coffee consumption can affect gut microbes, but microbes do not run the brain
Studies link coffee consumption with differences in the gut microbiome. That does not mean people drink coffee for their microbes or that those microbes control the brain.
Science & Engineering
Resilience research has spent decades studying how people survive hard things
Last year, I was at the International Symposium on Resilience Research in Mainz, hosted with the involvement of the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research.
Human Factors
Why height can feel different at an exposed edge than through a window
Fear at height depends on visual cues, balance, perceived control, and context. An astronaut's experience illustrates the difference, but it does not replace clinical evidence about acrophobia.
Science & Engineering
The sun is already dying — just on a timescale so vast that every civilization in…
On my 27th birthday, I watched a film about the sun dying. Project Hail Mary does not waste time on sentiment about this.
Psychology
A new study compared AI chatbot responses to those of licensed psychologists and…
At some point in the last few years, using a chatbot to process something emotionally difficult stopped feeling unusual.
Psychology
Research suggests walking may trigger a brain-cleaning effect scientists are still…
I have walked through a lot of difficult periods in my life. Not metaphorically.