There are many temptations to organize our life around the experience of earlier trauma. But that may short-change the future—which starts by our envisioning something better.
One of the nonpolitical shortcuts people use when evaluating politicians is their nonverbal displays—the messages they send with their facial expressions, body movement, eye contact, voice, and touch. How much does style matter over substance in politics?
How do we predict dangerous leaders' actions when they won't answer our proven psychological questionnaires or lie still for our fMRI bran scans? Well, here are a couple of choices.
Think cyber-terrorism can't happen to you? Think it doesn't "hurt" anyone? Ask the 3,800 employees of Sony Pictures, including some of its stars, who got caught up in the international political intrigue over the company's movie, The Interview. And see what one study shows that cyber-terror does to our hormones.
We’re all familiar with the cynical warning about leaders: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But research shows there's more to corruption than just power. And that "more" may be everyone's favorite sex hormone.
When interviewing for a Ph.D. program, you want to convey that you have a firm grasp of the journey you’re hoping to undertake. These seven questions will do just that.
Our imaginations are incredibly powerful. And if you listen to a Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner, and pay attention to a lot of research, you’ll see the leaders we get reflect our imaginations.
The Israelis and Palestinians live cheek by jowl, and the threat of immediate violence brutally lingers for both, sometimes with devastating health consequences. This shows, once again, that biology can affect our politics, and politics can affect our biology.
Smell your email? Apparently, now you can. Humans can detect up to 1 trillion scents, some of which aren't that palatable. And the ones that disgust us may actually affect our political attitudes, particularly toward sexual behavior.
War is always an evocative public issue and frequently implicated with evolutionary considerations, and the reaction to the Bergdahl-Taliban prisoner exchange could not make that more clear.
Will you jump with me into the middle of a couple of hot controversies? One relates to an issue that polite company didn’t publicly discuss in the not-too-distant past, and the other is a very important issue to anybody concerned with the validity of scientific research…ummm, that would be basically everyone.
Less than 10% of communication is spoken words. Most communication comes through body language and some through tone of voice. Take the tests and read what the experts say to find out if you can see through politicians' spoken words to know what they're really saying.
It’s very clear that in the complicated world of politics we do a lot of cover judging. Candidate faces matter. Candidate height matters. And this research suggests that candidate faces and heights get entangled in very interesting ways that also matter.
Let's take a looks at bullying in locker rooms in terms of leader-follower relations and the possible role of this form of “humor” in strengthening team unity.
A lot of crazy things go on in the world of professional football. It’s not that surprising since it’s a violent world populated by rich 20 somethings who by definition are freaks of nature. So I gave up long ago trying to make sense of some of the things that go on in the NFL. But the recent incident on the Miami Dolphins is even a stunner to me.
Are you an ‘ist: racist, sexist, ageist, or other? Differences in skin, sex, or age are not the problem. The problem is how we react to differences in people in general. We have what are most likely evolutionarily derived psychological mechanisms for categorizing people and objects, which we use to keep from being overwhelmed with information.
Anyone watching the news this last week got treated to the full monty of politics and sex with some reporters tittering about electronic flashing by New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner and others shaking their heads in disbelief at the brazen sexual predation of San Diego mayor Bob Filner.
It’s June. Flowers are blooming. The weather is warming. And love is in the air. June is a popular month to get married and often thought of as the traditional month of nuptials in the US. The arrival of the wedding season also arouses thoughts of the arrival of other things…babies. Why do we give our little bundles of joy the names we give them?
Want to know what your fellow PT blog readers are like? Hundreds of them answered a questionnaire on political moralizing. The results are in, and they say interesting things about our fellow PT blog readers.
Is scientific "foreknowledge" of people’s bad behavior a good thing? Here are 3 amazing scientific studies that use tests available now for biological characteristics associated with antisocial behavior and 5 reasons you should care about these "advances."
People often use several factors to think about politics. And some of these factors include issues of morality. Find out what kind of political moralizer you are and compare yourself to others.