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The Costs of the Secrets We Keep
Psychological experiments historically included lab-invented secrets and simulated social interactions. But a fresher body of research explores the secrets people keep in their everyday lives, experimental psychologist Michael Slepian wrote in a new article for Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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The Awkward but Essential Art of Office Chitchat
Every day around the world, an estimated three billion people go to work and 2.9 billion of them avoid making small talk with their co-workers once they get there. Their avoidance strategies vary. Some will keep their headphones
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The Dark Triad and the Evolution of Jerks
A great deal of recent research on evolution focuses on altruism—the tendency of creatures to help others, often at great cost to themselves. This is especially true of human beings, who help one another for
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You Probably Made a Better First Impression Than You Think
After we have conversations with new people, our conversation partners tend to like us and enjoy our company more than we think.
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Replication Study Shows No Evidence That Small Talk Harms Well-Being
People who engage in more substantive conversations tend to be happier but idle small talk isn’t necessarily negatively related to well-being, researchers find.
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How Other People’s Investments Can Elicit the Sunk-Cost Fallacy
A researcher looks at the interpersonal side of our tendency to avoid sunk costs.
A researcher takes a fresh look at why people often persist with an unpleasant or unprofitable endeavor because they don’t want the resources they’ve already invested to go to waste.
