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This morning I posted on a fascinating forthcoming study that concludes that generalized messages about science are more impactful on audiences than similarly framed messages that include details on scientific […]

Psychology Today comments on a survey finding that one in ten people think it appropriate to interrupt sex to send a text message. Is nothing sacred?

Morality is an indirect consequence of evolution that balances the needs of individual survival and satisfaction with those of society, writes a contributor at Psychology Today.

While raising a child should be done with love and care, we need not think a few bad "formative years" dooms someone to a dysfunctional or psychologically tormented life.

Leave it to an Italian art publisher to do an American artist right. Skira’s Edward Hopper, distributed in the United States by Rizzoli, may be the finest single volume visually […]

New York magazine’s cover story on the (negative) impact of children on happiness begs a larger question—and one appropriate so near to Independence Day (“life, liberty, and the pursuit” etc.): […]

Standardized tests are supposed to measure innate abilities. The subject of your last conversation, the lead story on the news last night, the pictures on the wall at the test […]

Your brain doesn’t work as well as you think it does. At least that’s what psychologist Christopher Chabris argues in his new book “Invisible Gorillas,” which calls into question the […]

This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]

This map, showing the surface and population of selected world cities, is outdated by over two decades. It was published in the Dallas Morning News on 9 June 1983, since […]

Almost everyone cheers for the underdog, but why? Turns out it may be to maximize our pleasure and psychological gain when watching sports events.

If you live in a city, it's probably loud; the effects of noise pollution fall disproportionately on the poor and damage our psychology as well as our physiology.

This year the School of Communication at American University has hired leading junior faculty in the areas of science journalism and risk communication. The two new faculty, scheduled to move […]

A new study at the journal Risk Analysis examines the factors shaping public perceptions of nuclear energy and provides important clues about how to effectively mobilize public support for expanded […]

When you hear the name Edvard Munch, you almost immediately think of The Scream. It’s unavoidable.  Even during his lifetime, Munch found himself linked to that image and a select […]

Allegorical fiction can take very complex realities and convey them in powerful, emotional, psychologically accurate way.

David Brooks’s recent love letter to Christopher Hitchens called (respectfully) only glancing attention to the celebrated author’s current battle with cancer; instead, Brooks focused on how important Hitchens is to […]

Phoebe Prince hanged herself in her bedroom in South Hadley, Massachusetts at the age of 15. Six students from her high school are charged with hounding her to suicide. Emily […]

Do you have sex like a Finn or a Bangladeshi? Researchers have surveyed "sociosexuality"—the scientific euphemism for promiscuity—in 48 countries.  Where do you rank?

Every year, The Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards a $100,000 prize to a project that has the potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems and significantly improve human quality of life. The […]

“Suck it up, suck it up, suck it up,” is the refrain taught to members of the U.S. Navy. But despite their often-stoic exteriors, soldiers are real people with real […]

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

Different species have their different tricks for getting by. Human beings are smart, quick-moving and numerous. We’re also pretty large, as mammals go. Sloths, on the other hand, take a […]

Hoarders have "a sense of intense responsibility for objects and an unwillingness to waste them," says Randy Frost. They also have an ability to find beauty in things that other people might not appreciate.

Americans under the age of 35 have grown up during an era of ever more certain climate science, increasing news attention, alarming entertainment portrayals, and growing environmental activism, yet on […]

If you want to rile up a biologist and have no pointed stick handy, try this: Tell her that chemistry or physics are “harder,” more fundamentally “sciencey” sciences than hers. […]

In some ways, the psychology of combat hasn’t changed since Troy. But modern wars have also brought their own unique traumas.

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

We’re taking better psychological care of soldiers than we used to. But with deployments getting longer and longer, far more needs to be done.