I have a soft spot in my heart for the song "Sunny Side of the Street," and that song has helped me get through some tough times in my life. The lyric "Life can be so sweet/On the sunny side of the street" captures our general belief that rainy days...

The population in the United States is aging. That has created a lot of anxiety about the cognitive effects of getting older. Lots of research suggests that older adults are worse than younger adults on a variety of different thinking tasks. They remember fewer words from...

In the wake of the bombing of the Boston Marathon, Americans all feel closer to the city of Boston. A wonderful cartoon in the New Yorker this week showed two Yankees fans wearing Boston Red Sox uniforms. Even Yankees fans can put aside their rivalry in the face of tragedy.

There is a popular image that people who are in positions of power are really unfulfilled. Perhaps they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Perhaps being able to choose to do what you want carries a psychological cost. Or, perhaps this belief is just wishful thinking on...

When you meet new people, there are a few things you can find out about them that seem to say a lot about them. The music people listen to, for example, seems to say a lot about their outlook on life. Political affiliation is another big dimension. In the US,...

There are many situations in life in which you have to follow other people's advice. Doctors recommend medications to treat problems. Mechanics suggest ways to maintain your car more effectively. Financial advisers indicate the investments they think you should consider.

Because companies know that advisers play a big role in...

It is common to use landmarks as a way of getting yourself motivated to do something new. Culturally, New Year's Day is a common date where people make the commitment to do something new (though they have typically given up on their new goal soon after the new year starts)....

On Sunday nights, I play in the horn section of the house band for Ted Hall's Blues Jam and Church. Over the course of an evening, we play music with some fantastic Austin musicians who stop by to sit in with the band. It is also a wonderful place for...

We all know that thinking about happy memories can make you happy, while thinking about sad events from the past can make you sad. This relationship is so well-established that it is often used as a manipulation of people's mood in experiments.

Presumably, this happens because thinking about a positive...

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

In his TEDTalk on self-deception, Michael Shermer suggests that we are susceptible to false beliefs, because finding patterns helps us to survive. I think...

Look at your life. Do you have friends? What kind of friends do you have? Have you got a few people in your life that you spend a lot of time with? Have you got a larger number of acquaintances that you see on occasion?

Which is better?

I...

Minds are strange things. Our conscious experience of the world feels separate from the body that we inhabit. That is why it is so easy to believe both in ghosts (minds with no physical body) and zombies (bodies with no conscious mind). Discussions about the relationship between mind and body...

The long presidential election campaign in the U.S. is finally over. Throughout the campaign, there was a lot of discussion about specific policies that different candidates would support. For example, President Obama often pointed to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as a signature achievement of his first term in...

Anyone who has tried to break a bad habit has experienced the trouble with willpower. You want to stick to your diet, but you find yourself standing at a buffet filled with tempting desserts. You want to avoid the desserts, but before you know it, there is a beautiful piece...

If there is a big lesson from the last presidential election, it is about the value of having good data. Once again, Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog made a spot-on prediction of the election results. His final map not only predicted that President Obama would win the...

You probably have a complex relationship with new things. For example, the first time you hear a new song, it is unfamiliar, and you are not sure whether you like it. After that first listen, the song begins to grow on you. For a while, it may seem like you...

In the movies, creativity often involves moments of insight. A character struggles with an idea. There is a montage of pained faces and crumpled sheets of paper. Then, suddenly, the light comes on. A choir sings. A new creative moment has happened.

When you see this movie scene, or when...

Ownership is an interesting concept. Unlike many other aspects of objects, ownership depends on the history of the object rather than its features. If you go to a store looking at shirts, the shirts there all belong to the store. If you purchase one (by trading money for the shirt),...

Little kids like to help out. An easy way to engage a toddler in play is to start to work on something and make it look like you need help. Often, they will come over immediately and work to help you with whatever you are doing.

The psychologist Michael...

Have you ever had one of those days where you just find it hard to get anything done? You sit at your desk trying to work, and your mind keeps wandering off. Eventually, you may just give up and do something else for a while.

There are many reasons why...