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Bernadett Szabo / Reuters Can Electrically Stimulating Your Brain Make You Too Happy?
When doctors can directly access patients' cerebral reward networks, someone has to decide just how good people should feel.
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Damir Sagolj / Reuters People Don't Actually Know Themselves Very Well
Chances are, your coworkers are better at rating some parts of your personality than you are.
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FAD EL VY: White Guys, Interrupted
Matt Berninger of The National continues his subversion of indie rock with a playful new side project.
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Thomas Leuthard / Flickr Hallucinations: Born From What People Know, Not What They See
Seeing things that aren’t there could come from relying too much on the mind and not enough on the senses, new research says.
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Denis Balibouse / Reuters The Benefits of Getting Comfortable With Uncertainty
“Wanting and not wanting the same thing at the same time is a baseline condition of human consciousness.”
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Damian / Flickr The Internet Wants to Help You Take Care of Yourself
Stop. Are you hungry? Then eat something before reading this.
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Regis Duvignau / Reuters When Patients Ignore Doctors' Emotions
When people are in need of medical care, recent research says they’re less likely to recognize physicians’ interiority.
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Warner Bros. The Psychology of Voldemort
J. K. Rowling’s investigation of her villain’s mind echoes the intrigue of a true-crime serial-killer profile.
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We Want Your Questions
For journalists, a great question is a spark. What does ISIS really want? Do babies know what’s happening when…
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Dabarti CGI / Shutterstock How 'Quantum Cognition' Can Explain Humans' Irrational Behaviors
An emerging theory takes principles from quantum physics and applies them to psychology.
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Panarat Thepgumpanat / Reuters Groups Are Better Than Individuals at Sniffing Out Lies
People are not generally great at detecting deception, but new research shows that discussing with others makes a big difference.
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ArtFamily / O.Bellini / Shutterstock / Zak Bickel ... The Rise of Work-Doping
The drug modafinil was recently found to enhance cognition in healthy people. Should you take it to get a raise?
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Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters How Friendship Fights Depression
A new study shows that a healthy mood can spread through friend groups.
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James Birkbeck The Existential Satisfaction of Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things
When two objects that shouldn’t go together somehow click, they provide a serendipitous moment of order in a world that’s mostly chaos.
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Chelsea Beck / The Atlantic Life’s Stories
How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are—and is a fundamental part of being human.
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Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters Empathy: Overrated?
Be kind, show understanding, do good—but, some scientists say, don’t try to feel others’ pain.
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Soffie Hicks / Flickr What Does It Mean to Be Healthy, Anyway?
The search for answers often leads to more questions. Notes from Spotlight Health.
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Nathaniel McQueen / Flickr Anatomy of a Blackout
A new memoir explores the little-studied phenomenon of alcohol-induced amnesia and the culture of drinking that downplays its dangers.
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Lauren Giordano / The Atlantic When the Therapist Is a Quack
A nationally watched gay-conversion trial exposes the dark world of unregulated counseling, where people calling themselves “life coaches” get away with practically anything.
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Lauren Giordano / The Atlantic Can Sexuality Be Changed?
A trial in New Jersey this week will determine whether telling gay people that they can become straight constitutes consumer fraud. The ruling might mean the end of so-called “conversion therapies” for good.
