Is there such a thing as a 'true self'?

Jul 31, 2017 09:01 am UTC| Life

To thine own self be true, the saying goes. It is often taken as sage advice, a remnant scrap of Elizabethan life coaching, but Shakespeare may have meant it to be heard as a stale platitude. He puts it in the mouth of...

The strange links between intelligence and prejudice

Jul 18, 2017 12:18 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life

Human judgement often becomes less accurate when we train it on ourselves. Self appraisals commonly flatter our strengths and minimise our weaknesses. The average man overstates his height by 1.2cm and the average woman...

Snout, sniff and sneeze: the language of the nose

Apr 11, 2017 04:42 am UTC| Health

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that language is fossil poetry. It is made up, he said, of images which have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. Some of that poetry is on the nose. An extraordinary number of...

Distress, status wars and immoral behaviour: the psychological impacts of inequality

Mar 28, 2017 11:18 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy

It is well known that economic inequality is rising. In most industrialised nations the distribution of wealth and income is becoming increasingly concentrated. In the United States, the top 10% of earners make more than...

Goosebumps, tears and tenderness: what it means to be moved

Feb 09, 2017 12:52 pm UTC| Health

Emotion embodies motion. When we experience emotions were are agitated and stirred, transported and animated. Motion is at the root of the word itself: emotion comes from the Latin, meaning to move out or away. Many...

The trouble with 'microaggressions'

Jan 17, 2017 15:08 pm UTC| Law

Few psychological concepts have caught on as successfully as the idea of the microaggression. The term gained wide currency only ten years ago, but by 2015 it had been crowned the word of the year by the Global Language...

Do art and literature cultivate empathy?

Jan 10, 2017 15:50 pm UTC| Life

A common argument for the value of the arts is the claim they cultivate empathy. Reading literature, viewing quality cinema and listening to fine music refine our sensibilities and make us better and more humane or so the...