When you feel moral disgust, what’s the emotion telling you? | Psyche Ideas
Some actions and words provoke instant revulsion. To know if we can trust that gut feeling, we should probe why we have it
emotions
Why We Stay Afraid - Nautilus
A newly discovered brain region in mice solves a longstanding mystery about how fear lingers after threats fade
‘I feel like I’m cancelling out her life’: the wrenching work of clearing out a parent’s home
From old love letters to pieces of string, our homes are stuffed with stuff. When it comes time to empty a parent’s home, sorting the junk from the memory can be overwhelming
Why it helps to see impatience as an emotion, not a trait | Psyche Notes to Self
Watching Penelope’s heroic wait in The Odyssey made me lament my impatience. But maybe I’ve been thinking about it wrong
The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn
Our love for telling tales reveals the workings of the mind
The sucker’s dilemma
In a world filled with scams, being wary makes perfect sense. But health, trust and decision-making can suffer when the fear of getting conned goes too far.
Being in a crowd doesn’t make you part of a mindless mob | Psyche Ideas
It’s often assumed people lose their minds in a crowd. Research on riots, festivals and sports tells a more uplifting story
Dogs can tell if you're scared or sad - Ars Technica
fMRI scans show happiness, fear, anger, and sadness have distinct brain activity patterns in doggy brains.
What we get wrong about dopamine
Sometimes dubbed the 'pleasure chemical', dopamine is often wildly misunderstood. Nikolay Kukushkin delves into what the much-discussed neurotransmitter really does to our brains.
Claude's Personality Changes Depending on the Model—And the Language You Speak
According to new Anthropic research, Claude consistently expresses different values across models and languages.
More Than a Feeling - Nautilus
How awe and wonder transform science and you
The Strange Blissfulness of Storms - Nautilus
Is there a biochemical reason that extreme weather makes us happy?
Why thinking hard feels bad: the emotional root of deliberation
Doubt is not just a lack of information; it is an unpleasant emotional state. New psychological research reveals that this negative feeling serves as a necessary alarm bell, pushing the human brain to abandon mental shortcuts and think critically.
This negative feeling acts as an internal alarm bell
intuition
Anthropic Maps 171 Emotion-like Concepts Inside Claude - Dataconomy
Anthropic's interpretability team published research revealing that its Claude Sonnet 4.5 model contains 171 internal representations that function analogously to
Dignity
Dignity is core to our humanity and woven into our sense of agency, authenticity, and the way others treat us, yet what it looks and feels like shifts across cultures, circumstances, and relationships. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and…
Why Do We Like Music?
People with musical anhedonia don’t get any enjoyment from music. Shayla Love writes about scientists studying this condition to learn about how music affects listeners’ minds and moods.
musical anhedonia
expectations
Friction Science: Why Users Drop Off - UX Magazine
Most teams worry about small changes to UI when users stop using the product. But research shows that the real problem is psychological friction. This is when your brain has hidden mental interruptions that make you think, "Maybe later." This article looks at the four types of…
Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?
No one knows why music has such a potent effect on our emotions. But thanks to some recent studies we have a few intriguing clues.
What makes a grudge stick?
Plus, the personality traits associated with activism
How Small, Easy Acts of Joy Improve Happiness and Well-Being
A community science project finds that modest reminders to find joy in the day can have benefits that are on par with those of more ambitious well-being interventions
The neuroscience of rejection: The surprising way your brain learns from being left out
Rejection stings, but scientists suggest it’s more than just emotional pain. New research indicates our brains treat social slights as learning signals, helping us recalibrate who values us and shaping how we navigate relationships and future connections.
Unhappiness Is a Palate-Cleanser - Nautilus
Why it’s impossible to always be happy.
The 7 Triggers of Fascination
Wish to push the right "buy" buttons in your consumer's hearts and minds? Consider the 7 triggers of fascination.
Why We Love to Be Grossed Out - Nautilus
Disgust may not be a straightforward extension of the immune system’s aversion to harmful substances, but rather “a psychological nebula, lacking definite boundaries, discrete internal structure, or a single center of gravity,” says psychologist Nina Strohminger.Photograph by…
The Strange Power of Laughter
An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt.
The small exercise that's a powerful mood booster
Counting our blessings is an age-old piece of advice – but it turns out that writing lists of good things that happen to us actually does help improve our mood.
The Power of Regret
A simple game shows how fear of regret shapes decisions.
The Roots of Fear: Understanding the Amygdala
Treating anxiety, depression and other disorders may depend on the amygdala, a part of the brain that controls strong emotional reactions, especially fear. But a deep understanding of this structure has been lacking. Now scientists at the University of California, Davis have…
Stuck in a rut? How to appreciate your life again, according to science
After a while, even the most exciting relationships, jobs and environments lose their spark. But cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot says it's possible to fall back in love with life's small joys.
How Actors Remember Their Lines
In describing how they remember their lines, actors are telling us an important truth about memory.
Why We Love Music
Researchers are discovering how music affects the brain, helping us to make sense of its real emotional and social power.
ChillsDB: an open-source database of chills-inducing stimuli
ChillsDB is the first database of validated audiovisual stimuli eliciting aesthetic chills (goosebumps, psychogenic shivers) in the US population.
Could that tingle down the spine be a way to rediscover joy?
In new research, scientists have looked into the potential benefits of giving people with depression the aesthetic chills
Why are Russians so stingy with their smiles?
In the US, smiling is a reflexive gesture of goodwill, but Russians view it as a sign of stupidity. Social psychology research could help explain this cultural contrast.
Elizabeth Goodspeed on the delicate art of nostalgia in branding
Our US editor-at-large dissects the emotional potency of heritage branding and how companies try (and sometimes fail) to capitalise on it.
What are Emotions, Legally Speaking? And does it even matter?
Exploring the Legal Framework for Emotion in Emotion Recognition Tech
This former Google X exec reverse engineered happiness — here's what he found
Mo Gawdat says it took him much longer to find happiness than it did for him to find success, so he hacked it for everyone else.
Why Are So Many Monsters Hybrids?
The captivating horror of category violation.
7 Things A Happiness Scientist Taught Me About Finding More Joy
“Without unhappiness, you wouldn’t survive, learn, or come up with a good idea,” points out Harvard professor Arthur C Brooks.
Psychology for UX: Study Guide
Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about some principles of human psychology and how they relate to UX design.
There's a word for feeling like you're falling behind in life, and 10 other common, hard-to-explain emotions
Ever experience an emotion you can't quite explain? You're not alone. These 11 words may help you describe them.
The Science of Gift Giving
There is a lot of social psychology out there providing information that can inform our everyday lives, and most people are completely unaware of the research. Richard Wiseman makes this point in his book, 59 Seconds - we actually have useful scientific information, and yet we…
8 Ways to Emotionally Reward Your Users | Web Designer Depot
They made this digital faux-Montana delightful enough that I don’t want to leave. But hey, you can use these powers for good.Anyway, my point is that people want payoff for the effort they put into things, and that includes the websites they browse. But you can build emotional…
How John Fetterman Came Out of the Darkness
In a series of emotional interviews, the unconventional senator opens up about his battle with depression.
The fear of being duped is ubiquitous, but excessive scepticism makes it ha
The fear of being duped is ubiquitous, but excessive scepticism makes it harder to trust one another and cooperate
Joy Is Good for Your Body and Your Mind – Three Ways to Feel It More Often
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Joy is very different from our other emotions.
How to feel less lonely as you get older
Work and family life are no longer so busy and life can suddenly seem empty. Here are some good ways to stay connected
The von Restorff Isolation Effect: What Stands Out Is Remembered Better
How our brains process music and why we like what we like | Press Play
How long does it take before you change the station or hit “skip” if you don’t like a song? Seconds — according to researchers at New York University.
The Art and Science of Spending Money
Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch once nearly died of a heart attack.