What’s So Great About Giving?

The researchers found that brain activity associated with happiness, along with self-reported happiness, increased simply after making a commitment to be generous to others. Happiness and happiness-related brain activity also went up when actually giving, the research...

The Exerciser: Think Exercise Think

How being hunter-gatherers boosted human brainpower and taught us to love exercise….New research suggests that the link between exercise and the brain is a product of our evolutionary history and our past as hunter-gatherers, and the same parts of the brain that are...

The Truth about Lying

  “Lying, it turns out, is something that most of us are very adept at. We lie with ease, in ways big and small, to strangers, co-workers, friends, and loved ones….Being deceitful is woven into our very fabric, so much so that it would be truthful to say that to...

Expletives for Pain. What fun.

“Swearing has been shown to relieve physical pain when it comes to banging your toe or slamming a finger in a door. Now, a new psychology study shows we shouldn’t be coy about cursing when suffering from an aching heart or hurt feelings.”* Expletives for...

Managing Mismatch: You vs. You.

“Mismatch Hypothesis: According to evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, humans evolved to survive in the African Pleistocene savanna. However, today’s environment is very different from that ancestral environment. This mismatch between our evolved...

Talking 101: True, Kind, Necessary, Beneficial.

“On average, people resolve misunderstandings in communication once every 90 seconds….Without such a system, our communication would fail constantly,” says Mark Dingemanse, first author of the study.* Some would say their communications fail constantly anyway....