You're Not as Virtuous as You Think

A 1961 research project asked ordinary people to send extremely painful electric shocks to a stranger. (Unbeknownst to the participants, the fake shocks ...

Homeowners Remove Alarm Clock from Inside Wall after 13 Years

Homeowner Jerry Lynn was trying to figure out where he should put a hole in his wall for a TV wire. He went up to the second floor of his house and lowered ...

Youth Feel Pressured to Maintain Happiness Façade

Donna Freitas in her thought-provoking book The Happiness Effect, argues that the real downside of social media is that it demands fake happiness. She ...

Closing Your Eyes doesn't Hide the Truth

Former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton wrote a poem in which she pictures herself trying to keep her eyes closed, ignoring the truth. But then ...

Teens Mistakenly Steal Cardboard Cake

A group of Minnesota teens were apprehended after attempting to steal a cake from a local grocery store. As if the embarrassment of getting caught by ...

Video Gamers Looking For Meaning, Order and Certainty

The numbers for the $101 billion (2024) video game industry are astonishing:

• 190 million Americans play video games.
• 61% of the US population plays a video game at least one hour a week.

Psychologists Say Self-Justification Chokes Love Out Of Relationship

In their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson describe how a fixation on our own righteousness ...

Speeding Driver Gives Officer Questionable Excuse

When it comes to excuses, law enforcement officers tend to have heard them all. But recently two drivers came up with some novel excuses. When a driver ...

How Telling Small Lies Tricks Your Brain into Telling Big Lies

Everyone lies once in a while, but according to a new study people who tell small, self-serving lies are likely to progress to bigger falsehoods, and ...

Expensive Truffle Oil Has No Truffles in It

Nothing boosts the prestige of a food or beverage like the perception that it is traditional, hand-picked, fresh, or otherwise limited in production. ...