Madisyn Stephenson

Bad news grabs the brain faster and holds on longer. A tour of negativity bias, the ratios people quote about it, and the ones that don’t survive scrutiny.

A tickling robot, a brain scanner and a finger-pressing duel show how your brain mutes its own touch, and what that says about everything you feel.

Nearly nine in ten people in one large survey get one weekly. Tunes named by 3,000 people show what makes a melody sticky, and why gum helps.

Around two in three people have felt it. Lab studies using virtual towns and brain scans suggest déjà vu is a memory check, not a glitch in time.

A 1994 newspaper letter named it, and a gorilla experiment explains it: nearly half of us miss what we aren’t tuned to see.

Tappers expected listeners to name half their songs. Listeners got 1 in 40. The same gap shows up in emails, classrooms and marriages.

A 1966 experiment found one clumsy blunder lifted a star’s appeal and sank an average performer’s. Here’s what decides which way it goes.

One study made people yawn with a magazine article. Another made them stop with a cold pack. Here is what the evidence really says.