In Defense of Beauty
The famous column overlooking the town of Astoria, Oregon has had a long and chequered history. Immense human capital has been expended on the construction of this tourist attraction on…
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Psychology
129 posts
Salvaging Mental Health Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic
Mental health is health is an aphorism with which young Canadians have grown familiar over the past decade. The sentiment has been reiterated by high school teachers, professors, counsellors, family…
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Social Justice Culture and Toxic Femininity
Western culture, we’re told, is suffused with toxic masculinity. Traditionally masculine traits like strength, reticence and stoicism have degenerated into misogyny and violence, which now pervade our cultural norms and…
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Why Do Women Orgasm?
Researchers have long been fascinated by the female orgasm. It isn’t necessary for a woman to orgasm during sexual intercourse in order to become pregnant. By contrast, in men, orgasm…
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Deep Dive into the Big Five: Openness
We humans have been trying to understand ourselves for thousands of years, yet we remain as perplexed as the ancients were about the nature of consciousness. In fact, we are…
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What Happened to the Mental Health Crisis among Younger People?
Before Covid-19 struck, mainstream media were constantly raising the alarm about a mental health crisis among younger people. However, during this pandemic, the mantra protect the NHS has been drummed…
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Joseph Henrich’s “The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”
Writing from Islamic Spain in 1068, scholar Said ibn Ahmad describes the different nations of the world. Some, like the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, Indians and Jews, he writes, have…
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Combating Psychology’s Replication Crisis
Replicability is the ability to obtain consistent results across studies that use different data sets to address the same hypothesis. This allows us to determine whether a certain effect, e.g.…
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From Psychotherapist to Psychoactivist: How Therapy is Becoming Derailed
This is a public health warning: the seal on the tin labelled Counselling and Psychotherapy has been tampered with and the contents have become contaminated. Mainstream culture has been captured…
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Toxic Infantility and Its Social Consequences
“There is deep infantilism in the culture,” laments actor and comedian Stephen Fry. Indeed, the ways in which opinions are formed, framed and expressed today often reflect a troubling lack…
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Why Progressives Downplay Progress
“Intellectuals hate progress,” writes Steven Pinker in Enlightenment Now. “Intellectuals who call themselves ‘progressive’ really hate progress.” There are plenty of reasons to think Pinker is right. Many progressives seem…
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The Price of America’s Atonement
We are the only animals with the capacity to feel shame at our very existence. Shame is a powerful emotion that causes pain, insecurity and even anger, but the deep…
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GTFO: What “The Social Dilemma” Gets Right and Gets Wrong
At the very beginning of the popular new Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, a mélange of former big tech employees, gurus and whistleblowers are asked: What is the problem with…
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Political Extremism in the US: A New Study
This study utilised a nationally representative sample to investigate the cultural divide on the political left and right. We found evidence of an ideological divide on both sides, with generational…
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Are You Who You Pretend To Be? The Social Media Masquerade.
Do you know the difference between you and your online persona? Do you believe you are who you pretend to be? You probably know that you’re not quite as filtered…
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Evolutionary Psychology: Predictively Powerful or Riddled with Just-So Stories?
This essay is part of a series on the value of evolutionary approaches to psychology. Part 1 clears away seven key misconceptions. Part 2 shows why evolution is necessary for…
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Does Darwinism Conflict with Religion?
When my dog chases the ball, does she do so with purpose? Or is she more like a windup toy, going through the motions, along with all the other atoms…
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Self-Defeating Polls and the Uncertainty of Predictions
A Californian plans to vote after work in what she believes to be a close presidential election … The day is rainy and as she approaches the polling place she…
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