Author’s: This post is an expansion of a feature I published a few weeks ago in New Scientist. It draws from research for a book I’m now writing, The Orchid and the Dandelion (Crown; ETA 2015). I originally explored this subject, at more length (and with monkeys) in a November 2009 Atlantic article, “Orchid Children.” A few years ago, […]
Continue reading →The answer is apparently to be more like Anthony Shadid, the extraordinary war reporter who died last week in Syria. Here’s a remembrance of him in The Atlantic from Thanassis Cambanis, a friend and fellow journalist: Anthony Shadid never seemed to be in a hurry. If you needed him, or simply wanted his company, he would linger […]
Continue reading →This guest post is by biologist and writer Emily Willingham, who first published it yesterday at The Biology Files. I asked her if I could post it here because it speaks to the importance of writing about behavioral science in a way that draws on data carefully rather than casually or by convenience to one’s argument; an […]
Continue reading →As faithful readers know, I’m working on a book, provisionally titled The Orchid and the Dandelion and likely to be published next year, about the orchid-dandelion hypothesis: the notion that genes and traits that underlie some of humans’ biggest weaknesses — despair, madness, savage aggression — also underlie some of our greatest strengths — resilience, lasting happiness, […]
Continue reading →Some of my favs from the last week or so. The photo above sums the dilemma explored in Seeing the Monkey in the Mirror: It’s not just the monkey in the mirror: It’s people looking at monkeys looking at themselves in a mirror that the person holds. A nice meta-level look at this self-recognition paradigm by @SrsMonkeyBiz, […]
Continue reading →Marc Hauser, the star psychologist and morality researcher accused of fraud, has resigned his position at Harvard. Appropriately, the Globe’s Carolyn Johnson, who covered this story better than anyone, breaks the story: Marc Hauser, a well-known Harvard psychology professor who has been on leave since an internal investigation found him guilty of eight counts of […]
Continue reading →A few months ago I posted a feature here about the science of choking under pressure, focusing on the work of University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock. A few days ago Bill Pennington ran a Times post about her work focusing on putting — a skill she uses in her labs to study the different ways […]
Continue reading →This guest post — a book review of Richard J. McNally’s What is Mental Illness — is by Jason Goldman, a University of Southern California graduate student in developmental psychology who blogs on behavior and psychology at The Thoughtful Animal. Goldman is also the psychology and neuroscience editor at ResearchBlogging.org and edited the science-writing anthology Open Lab 2010. When most […]
Continue reading →Lots of news has broken lately about Marc Hauser, the Harvard psychology professor famous first for studies of morality and cognition in nonhuman primates, and then, starting last summer, for being found guilty of scientific misconduct by Harvard. No one seems quite sure what to make of all these subtle movements and shifts, and whether […]
Continue reading →How many friends can we handle? Are online friends different from ones we actually see? I raised these issues a few days ago in a post about Robin Dunbar and “Dunbar’s number,” which explored the trade-offs we face in devoting time to local friendship versus those more distant. Now, by chance, Filip Matous over at […]
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