Psychology
Psychology
Psychology stories — what makes people tick, what childhood patterns shape adulthood, how high-functioning minds navigate the world. Part of our Mind & Meaning editorial section.
Psychology
Thought of the day from Stoic philosopher Cleanthes: "The Fates lead the willing; they drag the unwilling."
Psychology
Thought of the day from Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium: "We have two ears and only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less."
Psychology
A single sleepless night can raise anxiety levels by as much as 30% the following day, according to neuroscience research — as the brain’s emotional alarm grows louder and one of the regions responsible for keeping it under control becomes less active
Psychology
A Swiss chemist synthesized LSD in 1938 while searching for a respiratory stimulant, decided the compound wasn't interesting enough to pursue, then returned to it five years later and accidentally experienced the world's first known LSD trip
Psychology
An end-of-life caregiver spent eight years with people in their final weeks, and the regret she heard most often wasn't about what they'd done — it was living the life others expected instead of the one they truly wanted
Psychology
Before every spacewalk, astronauts spend hours breathing pure oxygen inside their own bodies for one specific reason — to stop their blood from doing to them exactly what nearly happened to test subjects inside vacuum chambers on Earth
Psychology
A single-celled parasite carried by cats, Toxoplasma gondii, infects an estimated third of all people on Earth, forms tiny cysts in the human brain, and in rodents famously rewires them to lose their fear of cats, and mounting research links it in humans to raised dopamine, greater risk-taking, and impulsivity.
Psychology
When scientists disrupted dopamine in hungry rats, the animals still showed pleasure when sweet food was placed in their mouths — they just lost the drive to work for it, suggesting dopamine governs wanting more than enjoyment
Psychology
Retirement can feel less like freedom than disappearance: researchers who study life after work have found that losing a job role can shake a person’s identity as deeply as any major life loss, even when leaving was their choice
Psychology
An octopus was filmed carrying two halves of a coconut shell across the seafloor to reassemble them later as a portable suit of armour, one of the only clear cases of a wild invertebrate using tools.
Psychology
Carl Jung once said: "Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."
Psychology
The man who wrote the best-selling self-help book in history, Think and Grow Rich, claimed the secret came from a private mentorship with Andrew Carnegie — but Carnegie's own meticulously kept visitor records show the two men never met.
Psychology
Astronauts, soldiers, and elite performers are all taught the same handful of body-based techniques to shut down panic in seconds, and none of them involve thinking positive thoughts.
Psychology
Titan's air warms the surface and its sky cools it: the greenhouse effect adds about 38 degrees Fahrenheit while the high-altitude haze subtracts about 16, leaving the surface about 22 degrees warmer than Titan's effective temperature
Psychology