Fear blinds us, immobilizes us, and makes fools of us. Scary stories abound on the internet, through emails, and in conversations, and dangers lurk in the dusty corners waiting to pounce on us and…

Look at a waterfall for 30 seconds. Now look at something stationary. The stationary object will appear to drift upwards. The same phantom movement is true after stepping off an airport walkway: if…

Despite being one of psychology's most memorable concepts and a genuinely good idea, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, immortalized in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" and later…

Semantic: "of, pertaining to, or arising from the different meanings of words or other symbols: semantic change; semantic confusion." Pedantic: "overly concerned with minute details or formalisms,…

Does money make you happy?  Economists think so - the concept of 'utility' assumes that economic activity represents people consuming in ways that best supports their happiness.  And yet,…

Belief: Girls tend to hang out in smaller, more intimate groups than boys. Not really.   At least not by the time children reach the eighth grade, says a new Journal of Social and Personal…

Not long ago, many scientists had the belief that after the age of about three, the brain was pretty much fixed in function. You could imprint new memories and learn new skills, but that was about it…

Propaganda - An Application Of The Forgetting Curve Learning curves,  forgetting curves, adjacency and the scientific roots of the black art of propaganda. Modern rules of propaganda have their…

The responsibility of Twitter updates got you down? D'you think about tweeting but never actually get around to it? Never fear, Adam Wilson is here. The University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical…

Sexual images trigger chemical reactions in your brain, which in turn compel us to act in specific ways, or be drawn to certain things, or motivated to engage in particular behaviors. It's common…