PSYCHOLOGY

How Mobile Phone Separation Anxiety Messes With Your Head

A Poignant "PowerPoint Culture" Video

12 Nutty Dungeons & Dragons Media Mentions From the 1980s

In the 1980s, U.S. and Canadian media were up in arms over Dungeons & Dragons and the problem of teen suicide.

Why Does the Sound of Running Water Make You Have to Pee?

Reader Bill wrote in to ask, “Why does the sound of running water make me want to pee—and sometimes

The Set of "The Shining" is Intentionally Impossible

The set in "The Shining" appears to be intentionally designed to confuse and freak out viewers, through subtle "impossible and illusionary designs used by Kubrick to disorientate the viewer, and to communicate the illusionary nature of the Overlook Hotel.

Ten Days in a Madhouse: The Woman Who Got Herself Committed

In 1887, intrepid reporter Nellie Bly pretended she was crazy and got herself committed, all to help improve conditions in a New York City mental institution.

The Science Behind Our Fear of Daleks

If you're familiar with Doctor Who, then you're most certainly also familiar with his mortal enemies, the Daleks. These alien creatures, encapsulated in metallic suits of armor, are such a quintessential part of British culture that hiding behind the couc

Don't Eat the Marshmallow

In the late 1960s, researchers at Stanford devised what's now known as the "marshmallow test" to test participants' ability to defer gratification. The test went like this: put a marshmallow on the table in front of a four-year-old; tell the child that

What Does I.Q. Really Test?

Back in 2007, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a terrific article for The New Yorker on the history of I.Q. At its core, Gladwell's article is a book review, covering James Flynn's What Is Intelligence? Gladwell discusses a series of surprising facts about I.Q.,

The Abilene Paradox

How often has this happened to you: your family gets together for the holidays and ends up doing something -- going out for food, playing some game, going to see a movie -- that nobody actually wants to do? This happened to me over the holidays when my

Does Pavlov Live on in DJ Casper? Convince Me I'm Wrong.

Though it may seem ridiculous, I've had a theory for a long time that the best modern example of Ivan Pavlov's work is a line from DJ Casper's dance hit "Cha-Cha Slide." The whole song is just a series of instructions, but one line in particular sticks o

My Favorite Documentaries: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control

One of my all-time favorite documentaries is Errol Morris's 1997 film Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. As a punctuation nerd, I disagree with the lack of a serial comma in its title, but we'll let that slide. Anyway. This film is about humanity, the nat

iPhone Versus Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

After buying an iPhone, I have begun to wonder where consumer purchases fit into Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed a system of human needs in his paper, A Theory of Human Motivation. At the base level, Maslow suggested that h