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Why do people spend decades tracing their lineages? Thinking about one’s ancestors provides comfort, improves one’s ability to deal with challenges and actually boosts cognitive performance, new research shows.
In a simple experiment, researchers asked people to think about their ancestors (or something else) and then measured their beliefs about their own performance on several cognitive [...]

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Anger can make people want things more, according to a counterintuitive new study which found that when people associate a product with anger, they desire it more.
Henk Aarts of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues showed people a number of objects such as pens and mugs. Before the picture of the object [...]

http://bit.ly/g4zBIF Tragedy tends to bring out the best in people, according to new research into cooperative behavior. The more people are affected by tragedy, the more they cooperate and engage in “prosocial” behavior.
In a study of 2,447 residents in five provinces at the epicenter of a 2008 earthquake in China, researchers found that residents who [...]

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Lots of people come home from work feeling upset. But it turns out there are systematic gender differences in the way heterosexual men and women bring work-related unpleasant feelings home.
Men, on average, tend to shield their families from unpleasant things that happened at work, and the more satisifed men are in their relationships, the more [...]

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In any class of children, you’ll see the usual bunch of outgoing kids and those who like to play by themselves or in smaller groups. But being gregarious in itself is not the only predictor of developing friendships – new research suggests that children who are drawn to others who are like themselves (as opposed [...]

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Both men and women change the pitch of their voices when they are trying to convey romantic interest, but the nature of those voice changes might surprise you. Psychologist Susan Hughes at Albright College recently asked a group of college students to leave voice mail messages via Skype to a fictitious person. The psychologist found [...]

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The Southern Legal Resource Center wants people to list their race as “Confederate Southern American” on their U.S. Census form. I think all Americans should list their race as BLACK — because humans are all descended from African ancestors.
If you agree, TELL YOUR FRIENDS about this idea. Census workers are currently visiting [...]

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For years, people who don’t believe the official version of the Kennedy assassination have wondered about a photo showing Lee Harvey Oswald in his backyard holding a rifle. One of the central concerns raised by doubters is that the shadows on Oswald’s face do not match the shadows on the ground. The shadow beneath his [...]

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Listen to an interview about The Hidden Brain conducted by the Diane Rehm show. The show was guest-hosted by the immensely talented Susan Page of USA Today, and featured a discussion that ranged from how to reform our criminal justice system to same-sex attraction among Visigoths. Sorry, I can’t say more. You’ll just have to [...]

Tiger Woods. Michael Jackson. Brittany Murphy. Why do we care so much when celebrities die, or cheat on their spouses? Why do we read magazine cover story after cover story about people in rigor mortis or in flagrante delicto with whom we share no personal connection? (I love this collage of New York Post cover [...]