Lots of people will do a lot to avoid feeling negative emotions. But researchers are figuring out how these unpleasant feelings actually have benefits.
Laughter is so fundamental that animals like chimps, rats and dogs share the ability with humans. But in people it serves more serious social functions than just letting others know you’re having fun.
Research suggests childhood trauma has a big part to play in obesity.
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Fear has important consequences for how people vote, what they spend their money on, who they consider to be part of their communities, and who they treat as outsiders.
Toxic customers are causing customer service employees to reach their breaking point.
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Decreased patience and heightened emotions have created a cycle of frustration, with rude customers having abrupt interactions with stressed out service workers.
The idea of healing benefits and emotional catharsis through reading is intuitively appealing. But does it work that way? Jane Turner Goldsmith finds answers in neuroscience, philosophy and more.
As the planet heats up, air pollution is getting worse.
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In a systematic review of existing studies, researchers found that air pollution such as fine particulate matter can interfere with regions of the brain responsible for emotional regulation.
In what’s called ‘benign masochism,’ some people find the feeling of disgust pleasurable.
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They say to improve your mood you should fake a smile and roll with the crowd. But research suggests the more pressure you feel to be happy, the worse you’ll end up feeling.
Human language is governed by a grammatical system – a sentence can be grammatical without meaning.
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Science denial is not new, but researchers have learned a lot about it. Here’s why it exists, how everyone is susceptible to it in one way or another and steps to take to overcome it.
It was better in the old days.
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Neuroscientists tackling the age-old question of whether perceptions of color hold from one person to the next are coming up with some interesting answers.
Images of death have been used as a scare tactic in public health campaigns for years.
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Rather than a vaccine to beef up your immune system, a psychoactive substance could boost your cooperative, pro-social behavior – curtailing the selfish actions that spur on coronavirus’s spread.