Browsing: Psychology

In Jasper Fforde’s lighthearted “Thursday Next” series of books, people can use a “prose portal” to enter the world of a book, to change the plot or kidnap a character. The prose portal is an imaginative metaphor for a familiar experience: feeling taken away by a narrative, sucked into a good book so that we […]

In the huge range of different human cultural inclinations, one of the most widespread is a fondness for stories. We just love to get lost in a good book or movie. When we do, we tend to ignore where we are and become completely absorbed in the story. Psychologists call this “transportation,” and have conducted […]

Human nature is one of those aspects of the world that can seem inexplicable, too varied and complicated to be pinned down by overarching explanations. On the one hand our species includes people like Garrett O’Hanlon, who was standing on a Manhattan subway platform one recent night when someone passed out onto the tracks right […]

Where we part ways with our ape cousins.

Befriending the Grim Reaper, or what Swiss sunshine has to do with the ultimate personal freedom.

The science of why 600 Facebook “friends” are an illusion, or why brand loyalty is a product of our own ego.

Beneath the biases of intuition, or how your experiencing self and your remembering self shape your life – cerebral candy from legendary psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman.

From Ancient Greece to quantum mechanics, or what a Chinese room and a cat have to do with infinity.

What the second law of thermodynamics has to do with Saint Augustine, landscape art, and graphic novels.