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
People who assembled a plain IKEA box would pay 63 percent more for it than people handed the same box already built, an overvaluation of their own labor that researchers named the IKEA effect
Psychology
One of the biggest factors in whether a stranger finds you attractive may not be your face, your body, or your clothing — research suggests it is whether you appear to be enjoying yourself in the moment they first see you, with a smile substantially modifying how attractive you appear in the brief seconds when first impressions form
Psychology
By 2035, the global space economy is predicted to reach roughly $1.8 trillion in annual value — up from approximately $630 billion in 2024 — driven by satellite mega-constellations, Earth observation services, commercial space stations, and the early stages of lunar resource extraction, in a quiet industrial revolution that many economists believe will exceed the speed of every previous economic transition in modern history
Psychology
Research into the neuroscience of social rejection has shown that the brain regions that activate when a person is excluded, rejected, or grieving a lost relationship are the same regions that activate during physical injury, with the overlap being so substantial that a standard over-the-counter painkiller measurably reduces both kinds of pain, because the human brain has co-opted the physical pain system to register damage to social bonds
Psychology
Quote by Hannah Arendt: “Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others.”e: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
Psychology
Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
Psychology
Across more than 100 countries, researchers have documented a "U-curve" of human happiness — life satisfaction reliably dips through middle age before rising again in late life — and the happiness people report in their late 60s and 70s is often greater than what they felt in their 30s, in a quiet curve almost nobody expects to be on while they are inside the dip
Psychology
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught that almost all human suffering comes from confusing the things we can control with the things we cannot — and the simple practice he proposed, of separating those two categories every morning before anything else, has quietly become the foundation of modern cognitive behavioral therapy nearly two thousand years later
Psychology
Ozempic was found in a 2025 clinical trial to reduce measurable biological age in adults by approximately 3 to 5 years — with improvements in inflammation, cardiovascular health, and kidney function — meaning a drug originally designed to manage blood sugar may turn out to be one of the first medications to formally extend human healthspan
Psychology
The neuroscience of intense romantic obsession shows that the brain in early-stage romantic love activates the same dopamine reward circuits as cocaine and gambling, with serotonin transporter levels indistinguishable from those of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, in a finding that explains why the experience feels involuntary and typically resolves within approximately 18 months regardless of outcome
Psychology
Researchers identified a personality profile that combines high empathy with high levels of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, in a finding that has complicated the standard scientific picture of empathy as an unambiguously prosocial human trait
Psychology
The Stoic philosopher Seneca observed that what makes a person genuinely happy is not how much they have, but how little they need to be content — and the small jolt of his observation, two thousand years later, is that most modern definitions of the good life are still organized around acquiring more of exactly the things he warned would never quite settle the longing they were meant to satisfy
Psychology
The marshmallow test, redone with ten times as many children, found that a four-year-old's willpower mostly stopped predicting teenage success once family background was taken into account
Psychology
Above 26,000 feet on Mount Everest — in the death zone where the air contains roughly one-third the oxygen of sea level — climate change is melting the ice that has buried more than 200 frozen climbers, and Nepali army teams recovering them in 2024 also removed approximately 11 tonnes of trash, in a quiet revelation that the highest place humans have ever reached is also a slowly emerging landfill
Psychology