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• [article] The New Democracy — 13 May 2020
  Today’s representative democracy balances power between the few & many. Despite flaws & crises, it provides stability for change, avoiding turmoil & uprisings. The many gave power to the few; change is in their hands.
• [article] Who was Plato and Why Should We Care — 22 Apr 2020
  Plato has become something of a synonym for philosophy. A figurehead that encapsulates the idea of searching for meaning. In doing so, his philosophy has escaped us. And yet, his works from almost 2500 years ago reflect on matters that we still grapple with today.
• [article] Common sense isn't as helpful as you'd like, and neither is the truth — 18 Apr 2020
  We covet common sense, especially at those times where the expertise of the academic world can seem so distant from our daily concerns. But the spirit of academic enquiry has something that common sense doesn’t and you don’t need to be an academic to have it too.
• [article] Why being sad isn't always a bad thing — 7 Apr 2020
  A great deal is made about depression these days. Depression is on the rise. Suicide is on the rise. Anxiety is on the rise. It’s alarming, and it often dominates the headlines. Most egregious is the claim that ‘perhaps young people these days are too fragile’. It’s not just a deflection of responsibility. What this new media narrative misses is that it’s OK to be sad sometimes. In fact, some would say that being sad can actually be a good thing.
• [article] Honey-bees are smarter than they should be — 29 Mar 2020
  Animals show glimpses of cognitive abilities that challenge our traditional notions of higher-order thinking, making us question what truly characterises sophisticated thought and what it means to be clever.
• [article] On attraction and love — 13 Mar 2020
  Much is written on the subject of attractiveness. It has become synonymous with beauty. Attractive celebrities, attractive influencers, attractive art. And through this myopic lens, attraction becomes something ugly. Something that people have or do not have. Something to be jealous of. Something to be torn down. But it doesn’t have to be. It can actually be something very beautiful indeed.
• [article] The false promise of a return to nature — 22 Feb 2020
  The movie Captain Fantastic portrays a sort of scenario I think many of us have entertained at one time or another. Pack a knife, some food, and a bag full of books and gap it into the wilderness. Live off the land, and indulge our atavistic tendencies – a simpler, more fulfilling life. Probably too simple…
• [article] Avoiding the scientific ego problem — 15 Jun 2019
  Science is often an egoistic pursuit. Something about developing a theory seems to inject an arrogance into the method which can lead to a relentless pursuit of a theory in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. This hurts us, but it doesn’t have to.
• [article] Why catharsis is a (dangerous) lie — 24 Feb 2019
  Aristotle used the term catharsis to describe the ‘purge’ of emotions by indulging in them. Then we made it into a theory. But ‘venting’ your emotions doesn’t fix them, it just makes it worse. Much worse.
• [article] Alert - IQ scores are meaningless — 11 Jan 2019
  The Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, is commonly considered a representation of your raw intelligence. At least, that’s the folk wisdom. But the folk wisdom is wrong.
• [article] The three reasons why everyone is so 'cliquey' — 5 Nov 2018
  The psychology of cliques has a pretty stereotypical pattern. It’s been well-described since the 80’s. There are three phases, and often they end in collapse.
• [article] Attractiveness might be more about the environment, than about you — 23 Aug 2018
  There are a number of things that occur naturally in our environment that can alter the attraction we feel for people. These things might seem small, but they have an outsize influence on our preferences for people.
• [article] Coming together - the pattern of friendship and love — 12 Jun 2018
  Making and keeping our connections to others remains one of the fundamental arts we learn in life. And having a stickybeak into other people’s relationships is one of the fundamental past times. But if there’s one thing psychologists are good at, it’s identifying patterns in the way people behave. In that spirit, this model describes the process of people coming together used in the counselling office and by counsellors people-watching over coffee that’s quite beautiful.
• [article] Learned helplessness is darker (and less understood) than you think — 3 May 2018
  As a psychological theory, ‘learned helplessness’ has an even worse origin story than the grittiest Batman reboot you can imagine. But the story also has a deeper meaning that’s often lost in the telling.
• [article] The most powerful way to get someone to like you, is to like them first — 23 Apr 2018
  One of our most powerful urges is to be liked. Strange to find, then, that one of the most powerful influences on our likeability is whether others think we like them—‘reciprocal liking’.