Julie Beck digs deep into news silos, alternative facts, and cognitive dissonance.
Psychology
Posted inEditor's Pick
This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs.
Posted inBusiness & Tech, Nonfiction, Quotes
We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Screen: On the Addictive Escapism of Video Games
In Vulture, Frank Guan, an avid gamer himself, digs deep into the appeal and addictive qualities of video games in an effort to understand the psychology that undergirds hard-core gaming — and whether it has an impact on or can predict our politics.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Rorschach’s Inkblots Are Part of Art History
Merve Emre looks at the enduring visual power of Hermann Rorschach’s inkblots while reviewing Damion Searls’ new book on the German psychiatrist and his work.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Eye of the Beholder
Rorschach tests may have fallen out of favor among psychologists, but maybe their real value is as pieces of art?
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Law and Order, Coffee Shop Edition
Susan Read’s short fiction centers on a Kafka-esque interrogation in the back room of a coffee shop — you know, the one where they wear the green aprons — that’s a stinging indictment of the byzantine policies, procedures, and psychology of being a low wage employee.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Marshmallows that Gave Us the Modern Notion of Self-Control
How willpower — and its absence — turned from a moral and religious concept to a controversial scientific one.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
“Modern Life Is Not Violent Enough,” Said Nobody — But They Thought It
This excerpt from Chuck Klosterman’s book “But What If We’re Wrong?” is nominally about football, and violence, but is also a prescient analysis of U.S. politics.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Against Willpower
It’s a concept that has shaped ethical debates for centuries. A clinical psychiatrist now thinks it’s time we got rid of it.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Our Ignorance Makes Us Overestimate How Much We Know
Impostor syndrome has been covered extensively in recent years. Its inverse, known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, is at least as pervasive: our innate tendency to confidently claim expertise in topics we know very little about, sometimes to embarrassing (if not tragic) results. Writing for Pacific Standard, David Dunning, who led the first studies of this […]