Q&A with researcher Robb Rutledge on mental health, expectations, decision-making and, yes, holiday planning!

Have you ever looked for­ward to a con­cert, beach vaca­tion, or par­ty only to find your­self not enjoy­ing it as much as you thought you would? You may be suf­fer­ing from over­ly high expec­ta­tions, says psy­chol­o­gist Robb Rut­ledge of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Rut­ledge and his col­leagues have been using smart­­phone-based data col­lec­tion (via a free app called…

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Five thoughts to think about when thinking about the speed of thought

As inquis­i­tive beings, we are con­stant­ly ques­tion­ing and quan­ti­fy­ing the speed of var­i­ous things. With a fair degree of accu­ra­cy, sci­en­tists have quan­ti­fied the speed of light, the speed of sound, the speed at which the earth revolves around the sun, the speed at which hum­ming­birds beat their wings, the aver­age speed of con­ti­nen­tal drift…. These…

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On perception, cognitive bias and cultivating humility ahead of next week’s vote

Many Amer­i­cans wor­ry about the polit­i­cal divide tear­ing our coun­try apart. A large per­cent­age are unwill­ing to engage with peo­ple who have oppos­ing polit­i­cal views, and that’s cre­at­ing more ani­mos­i­ty. This is espe­cial­ly wor­ry­ing con­sid­er­ing how many crises we’re fac­ing that require coop­er­a­tion, trust, and solu­tions a diverse cit­i­zen­ry can get behind. How can we…

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Math brain teaser requiring no math — just perception and cognition

Greek math­e­mati­cian, physi­cist, engi­neer, inven­tor, and astronomer Archimedes made many great sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies through­out his life. He explained why and how bod­ies float in the water, designed mir­ror arrays capa­ble of focus­ing sun rays and set­ting ene­my ships on fire, found the way of approx­i­mat­ing the num­ber of grains of sand that will fit inside…

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