Risk vs pleasure in a pandemicThe Covid-19 pandemic forces us to make an unsavoury calculation that most of us perform without realising. What is a life worth: how much pleasure are we wi...
If you pay people less, they like their job moreImagine that you’d agreed to take part in an experiment on factors affecting task performance. For the first half-hour, you put twelve spools on a tray with ...
Why is talking to yourself mad but talking to your computer normal?The most powerful technique we have for predicting what other objects will do is the invention of minds. We endow those things with beliefs, desires, knowled...
We care more about one person than a hundredGiving money to charity makes us feel good. When we decide to give money, the same part of our brain is active which responds when we receive money or food ...
The bigger the crime, the more likely we are to find someone guiltyWhen we judge somebody, it’s not sufficient for us to know that they’ve caused harm; we also think it’s important to find out whether they intended to do what ...
What are people's biggest regrets in life?The life not lived can be more vivid than the life we do live. What if I’d married Katie or Suzie instead of Charlotte? What if I’d studied economics rather ...
Arguments are used for defending choices, not making themWe don’t have conscious access to our real decision-making processes. But we do have access to a model which is very good at explaining our own and others' c...
How the hand sees what your eye can'tAs a child, if not more recently, you’ll have seen the Ebbinghaus illusion. When a circle is surrounded by other, much smaller, circles it appears bigger tha...
You hear with your eyes and see with your earsIt is common knowledge that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, taste with our tongue and smell with our nose. But it isn’t true. In the Seventies, Har...
How your friends change what you buyWithout being paid, other people promote brands to us everyday. Our friends might wear T-shirts bearing a little man riding a horse. Our colleagues carry bac...
We do what we imagine others do, even though we know what others do is wrongSometimes our understanding of people is so flawed that our attempts to change what they do have the opposite effect. In Arizona, there is a fascinating natio...
If you think you’ll always be alone it’s more likely to happenBeing single is bad for you, and expecting to remain single is bad for the people around you. Apart from the unpleasant feeling of being lonesome, it has hea...
Being good makes us badWhen we're caught doing wrong, we try to make amends and restore others' good opinion of us. But what about when we're already in moral credit? In one Canad...
Do reasons or decisions come first?The best psychologists are good at deceiving their subjects. If volunteers cotton on to what a study is really about, some of them say and do what they can t...
We like things more the more we see themMost of us are fortunate enough to be surrounded by things we like. There has to be something wrong with the man who lives with pictures on his wall he hates...
Are you rich enough to be bad?The rich have it all to lose; you'd expect them to follow the rules. But here's how they don't... The less well-off realise they have more need of other peo...
Evil is more interesting than goodIn the news today, as every day, you’ll find lying politicians, racist attacks, rapes, murders, environmental ruin, wars and nuclear bombs. But that’s the new...
Nonsense makes you smarterOne of the frustrating things about the internet is the clickbait. Those headlines that begin, 'Here's why...', 'This is how...', '12 things that'll make you...
Why blue keeps you awakeMobile phone and app designers have noticed something that you probably spotted before you started school. In the day, the sky is blue. In the evening it tur...
Miserable people understand people betterPeople are surprising. It’s a good job: if we and others always behaved in the way we’d expect, there wouldn’t be any psychologists. Studies on social loafin...