Anthropologist and science historian Eric Michael Johnson has posted an excellent essay on how altruism and murderous spite are two sides of a coin called "inclusive fitness" and -- according to him -- only exist in humans.Personally, I find the theory of inclusive fitness to be a tad strained -- at least in many of its applications in evolutionary psychology. Read More

I'm taking a brief grief break (as if that is even possible) to ask a question: For those folks who are in the process of separating or divorcing, or who have recently done so, has technology had an impact on your split?When my parents split in the divorce boom of the late 1970's, communication meant agonizing, endless phone calls, face-to-face meetings, child-support checksferried by the kids, en Read More

Sometimes, when the news all seems to be bad, when the bank account is running low, when our emotional stores are feeling empty, it is more difficult to feel generous. We find ourselves in a state of scarcity, clutching desperately to what we have, holding it closer and struggling with the concept of giving anything away. In the present economy, many people are stuck in this cycle of scarcity and fear. These are the times when giving can be most important, and can have the greatest positive influence on our state of mind. Read More

How can seemingly good leaders be corrupted by power? Is power intoxicating? What distinguishes good from bad leaders? Read More

A number of authors, including Daniel Willingham and Kathy Hirsch-Pasek, have pointed out that current understanding of brain development is not sufficient to provide a scientific approach to education. Read More

In my previous post I explained the basic principles of celebrity atheism: Sure, there are actual people who correspond in some sense to well-known celebrities such as Beyonce or Scarlett Johansson. Read More

 Our culture portrays love in terms of personal sacrifice and self-surrender. In fact, self-sacrifice has become entwined with the notion of love and serves as a criterion for gauging whether one's love is "true." Although I agree that love involves commitment, which is sometimes expressed in self-sacrifice, such sacrifice should not be the main way of valuing love. Read More

Even as a kid I was intrigued by what seemed to be an obvious connection between dreams and madness.  How could I be reasonably normal during the day and then hallucinate all night long?  It lead me to develop the notion of Dreaming Out Loud.  Why couldn’t the people who ran in circles and foamed at the mouth simply be stuck in a kind of dream state?  I should say this was way Read More

Two large pharmaceutical companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last year or so, all in the attempt to raise awareness among physicians and patients of the existence of a chronic pain syndrome, known as fibromyalgia.  Not surprisingly, this education of the sufferers and the soothers has resulted in increased sales of medications approved for the treatment of fibromyalg Read More

Our anxious brains were evolved to respond to a threat that was immediate. The tiger in the bush wasn't going to wait around for your ancestor to carry out probabilistic calculations about false alarms. Danger was imminent and your response-to escape-needed to be instantaneous. Reflection was the hallmark of the" soon to be eaten".  Read More

Will direct-to-consumer genetic testing reshape the quest for romantic compatibility? Unlikely, although at least two companies are giving it an effort. For only $99, the Swiss company GenePartner offers a test for what it describes as compatibility between potential partners. Read More

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.                                        - J.K. Rowling Isn't that the truth! Read More

I count "The 5 Dollar Challenge”, described in my last blog post as a success in demonstrating that with an entrepreneurial mindset, opportunities are abundant. But it left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t want to communicate that value is always measured in terms of financial rewards. So, I added a twist the next time I assigned the project. Instead of five dollars, I gave each team an envelope containing ten paper clips. Read More

A few weeks ago, millions of us wept as we watched Paris Jackson break down at her father's funeral. For me, she was the quintessential image of father loss. Read More

We're spending over $630 billion on guns, missiles, and bombs every year, but can't afford less than $1 trillion (over ten years) to insure every American? Really?How much would we spend on the CIA and arms if our enemies were killing 22,000 Americans every year? Read More

There's an intriguing profile of Sharon Osbourne coming out in the September 2009 issue of the British magazine, Psychologies.(By the way, the August issue of Psychologies -- on U.S. Read More

You may not be willing to pay $250,000 to dine with Warren Buffet. But if he offered you a tip, you would fly to Omaha and join him for a decent sized stake in one of his favorite meat joints. How come, then, you're a lot less excited over other risk tips that may change, or even save your life?   Read More

My happiness project has convinced me of the tremendous value of reminders that help prompt happy memories. Studies show that recalling happy times helps boost happiness in the present. Also, when people reminisce, they focus on positive memories, with the result that recalling the past amplifies the positive and minimizes the negative. Read More

If we accept that our species is and always has been optimized for a highly sexual life and that adolescent boys and young men are especially primed for action, why should we be surprised by the destructive frustration that results when this primal drive is thwarted? Read More

If you've ever struggled with gullibility, these suggestions should enable you to cultivate a healthy skepticism--which in turn should "arm" you against those who view you only as an object for person gain. After all, it's only wise to be wary about people and situations you don't really know that well. Read More

Forty-eight-year-old George Sodini was a deeply frustrated, bitter man. Yesterday, his anger, resentment and rage finally exploded into the premeditated madness of violence. Sodini strolled into an all female aerobics class at LA Fitness in Pittsburgh, PA, shot three young women to death, wounded nine, and then committed suicide. What was Sodini so angry about? It appears, based on his own self-published blog entries beginning more than nine months ago, that Mr. Sodini was frustrated primarily about his difficulties with women. He complains of an inability to find a girlfriend since he was twenty-three, not having sex for almost two decades and, most recently, failure to find a date during the past twelve months.Could chronic sexual frustration have caused this catastrophe? To conclude so would be a gross oversimplification of this and other violent offenders' profound existential embitterment, fury and frustration. Read More

The second step in this two-part empathy process is what makes tragedies tragic.Between Tom and Summer the empathy switch is slammed off. Neither one can read the other with any reliability. Readability is part of it. Summer plays things close to the chest. But it's mainly an issue of interpretative frame. Tom's general filter is biased. From day one he is convinced "she is the one," despite her straightforward stance that love is a fantasy and that Tom is just a friend. This premise of irreconcilable differences causes a cascade of misunderstanding and misinterpretation that, in turn, cause discord and discontent. Read More

Doctor's unnecessarily let 50,000 healthy babies die each year by ignoring thyroid issues in pregnant women. This risk can be avoided by taking a simple antibody blood test that can reveal if you need thyroid treatment.  Read More

Preschool children often show confusion about letters of the alphabet. They write them backward or upside-down and don't seem to care about the differences we point out between their productions and the standard version. As they get older, some children continue to make the same mistakes, and their efforts to read are confused as they ignore the order of letters or even of words. Read More

Antidepressant use in America has doubled. Does this mean there is more awareness?  More healing?  More depression occuring? Or simply more advertising profit? The Biopsychosocial model has been a sturdy guide to healing for therapists and patients. Is the model broken by drug advertising? Read More

We believe fictions, but not just fictions. We show the same credulity in everyday life all the time, as "lie blindness," and such credulity makes no evolutionary sense. If we can understand why we don't disbelieve fictions, we may be able also to understand why we can't detect lying in life. Read More

This week's not-so-startling news that the use of antidepressants has doubled came as no surprise to us, and probably not to any non-comatose person any of us know. In fact, there's a high probability that a goodly percentage of the people we all know are on anti-depressants and have become part of that statistic. Read More

I have always believed in something, some other thing, not me, not of me, not controlled by me, that exists on some other plane, but only with great skepticism. I'm no sucker. No snake oil bought here. Trust but verify.I also, for lack of a better way to put it, see dead people. Not like that. But in this always-have way I've always had of feeling an awareness of passings, of pain, of souls. Read More

 This post will describe some additional ways to develop gullibility resistance. Specifically, it will discuss such proven techniques as learning just why you got victimized--or duped--in the past, becoming more skeptical about the "evidence" of anecdotes, being wary of so-called "authorities," and the importance of keeping your emotions under control. . . . Read More

When I was sixteen my best friend dropped me for another girl because I wasn't "deep" enough for her. I felt devastated, my confidence crushed. Here's my advice about friendship: Read More