Psychology

Spotify data puts the age your taste sets at 13 or 14, and your parents’ records may have sneaked into the same file.

Unbidden memories surface several times a day. The embarrassing ones sting hardest, and a short self-kindness exercise can take the heat out.

Parole judges seemed to grow harsher as lunch approached. The famous study behind decision fatigue looks shakier under cross-examination.

The famous “Mount Stupid” curve isn’t in the original study. Here’s what Kruger and Dunning actually found, and what statisticians did to it.

The 38 silent witnesses to Kitty Genovese’s murder were largely a myth. The science of bystanders is more hopeful, and more useful, than the legend.

Repetition quietly rewires taste. Fifty years of mere exposure research explain why songs grow on you, and why some never will.

Everyone over 30 says the years are getting shorter. Psychologists have five explanations, and some hold up far better than others.

In 1737 Benjamin Franklin disarmed a hostile politician by borrowing a book. Two centuries of psychology suggest the trick works, with caveats.

Your memory of a holiday, a hospital visit or a relationship is shaped by two moments. Here is how the peak-end rule works, where it comes from and where it breaks down.

Walking through a doorway can make you forget why you got up. What the original experiments found, what a larger 2021 study added, and how to stop it happening.