In an episode of House, M.D. (“Airborne”) an illness spreads among passengers on a commercial airplane via ostensibly non-biological means, creating a mini-epidemic with purely psychological origins. Could something like this happen in real life? Does the mere conviction that one is becoming
People are sense-making creatures in a world that does not always make sense. This is a problem – although we prefer our world and environment to be orderly and predictable, and an expanding body of research shows that we do not like randomness and a lack of control over life’s outcomes (Kay
Where do all the studies come from? Behind every headline trumpeting a new finding in psychology, you can usually find an article in a peer-reviewed psychology journal. But how reliable are these findings? This is what many scientists have recently started to wonder. Because of this, journals in...
Authored on
During this pandemic winter, many of us will be away from the people we love most. The absence of the physical presence of loved ones deprives us of hugs, physical touch, and feelings of physical and psychological warmth that no amount of Skype or Zoom ever seems to fully replace. In his forthcoming...
Authored on