Articles
I am a contributing editor at Scientific American and write the Brain Waves blog for Psychology Today (you can find those posts here). My work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Vogue and many other publications. Earlier in my career, I was on staff at Newsweek, and People, among other places and I’ve included a few of my old favorites from those days.
Sisters-in-law are not always friends. Just ask Kate and Meghan
Last July, when the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex sat side by side in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, they looked an awful lot like two girlfriends hanging out. The world wanted that to be true. Among the many imagined ways Meghan Markle might have benefited the…
Social Media Has Not Destroyed A Generation
New findings suggest the angst over social media is misplaced.
It was the headlines that most upset Amy Orben. In 2017, when she was a graduate student in experimental psychology at the University of Oxford researching how social media influences communication, alarming articles began to appear. Giving a child a smartphone was like giving a kid cocaine, claimed one. Smartphones…
The Significant Problem of P Values
Standard scientific methods are under fire. Will anything change?
In 1925 British geneticist and statistician Ronald Fisher published a book called Statistical Methods for Research Workers. The title doesn’t scream “best seller,” but the book was a huge success and established Fisher as the father of modern statistics. In it, he tackles the problem of how researchers can apply…
Does Your Microbiome Shape Your Friendships?
Research confirms that who you spend time with is a powerful predictor of the microbes you carry. But these tiny organisms may also influence your social life.
See the original article here. It is early morning on a wide plain in Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya. With a small Dixie cup and a wooden tongue depressor, Susan Alberts picks up a fecal sample left by a female baboon named Yoruba. Alberts is an eminent primatologist. She…
New Insights into Self-Insight: More May Not Be Better
An innovative study technique yields surprising results that counter the popular idea that knowing yourself is good for you
How useful is it, really, to know thyself? The idea that self-insight is good for us dates all the way back to the inscriptions on ancient Greece’s Temple of Apollo in Delphi. It is still popularly assumed that people with a clear view of themself and their abilities are better…
Debate Arises over Teaching “Growth Mindsets” to Motivate Students
Research shows conflicting data on the impact of the intervention, but a major new study confirms it can work
In her 2006 book Mindset, psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University identified the power of beliefs. “They strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it,” she wrote. “Changing people’s beliefs—even the simplest beliefs—can have profound effects.” She then argued that people who possess “fixed mindsets” believe…