Let’s be honest: everybody lies. The question is whether people believe what you say. And a new study shows that your trustworthiness depends not just on the words you use, but on who you are and how you say them.
Psychology
Why You Shouldn’t Make a Contract With a Psychopath
Pity the poor psychopathic criminal. O.K., pity might be a strong word, but cut them a little slack. A new study in the journal Psychological Science shows that one of the reasons for their characteristic badness to the bone is …
“”
I Don’t Actually Hate Myself: Why Harvard Is Wrong About Bias
My colleague Maia Szalavitz wrote a great piece we posted Monday on how an online test developed at Harvard can help uncover hidden biases in how you treat people.
Psychology vs. Psychiatry: What’s the Difference, and Which Is Better?
Psychologists and psychiatrists tend to hate each other. The reasons are historical: beginning even before Freud, psychologists held enormous power over the cultural imagination. The whole idea of psychiatry — an explicitly …
A New Study Shows How We Can Prevent Some Cases of PTSD
We barely know how to treat mental illnesses, so it’s difficult to figure out how to prevent them in the first place. But as I wrote at some length last year, research into stopping breakdowns before they occur has advanced …
Can background music up the odds of getting a date?
According to a new study from French researchers, when romantic music is playing in the background, women may be more likely to agree to a date. To determine whether romantic music might actually help spark a romance, researchers from Université de Paris-Sud and Université de Bretagne-Sud recruited 87 women 18- to 20-year-old single
…
College students short on empathy
Students today seem to care more about things like the environment and animal welfare and poverty around the world, but how much empathy do they really have toward their fellow man?
Surprisingly, not that much, according to a survey by researchers at University of Michigan. In fact, today’s college students, the scientists found, …
Reading Swimsuit Issues “For the Articles”
Men really believe they read Playboy for the articles (although internet porn doesn’t even offer that excuse)—at least according to fascinating new research published as a working paper by Harvard Business School [hat tip: Economist]. The study sheds light on how people rationalize embarrassing or otherwise questionable behavior …