Psychology
Discover facts about psychology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Psychology
The bizarre wellness fad of sunbathing your perineum
An ordinary wellness routine is easy to ignore; an intimate, startling one is hard not to share. Sunbathing the perineum packages self-improvement as a taboo…
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Why your native language stands out abroad
A familiar voice or phrase can feel startlingly vivid overseas. Your mind has a finely tuned template for the sounds of your native language, so it catches…
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How blindness can turn the visual cortex toward sound
When sight is unavailable, the brain can recruit parts of the visual cortex to help process sound. A click or echo can become useful information about where…
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Extreme ironing takes a household chore somewhere absurd
Participants bring an ironing board and iron into settings such as mountains or climbing routes, then document the result. The sport's defining joke is the…
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The bizarre sport where opponents wrestle with toes
In toe wrestling, competitors hook their big toes together and try to force the other person’s foot down, usually across a small board. It turns a body part…
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A Sateré-Mawé initiation uses gloves containing stinging ants
Young participants in the Amazonian community place their hands into gloves woven with bullet ants. The painful ritual has a social meaning as an initiation,…
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Competitive dog grooming turns poodles into dragons
At competitive grooming shows, a poodle’s coat becomes a sculpting material. Groomers trim and dye it into elaborate shapes—including dragons—because the…
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The sport where teenagers gallop on hobby horses
A hobby horse is a toy, but the sport asks for real athletic timing: riders gallop, jump obstacles, and perform routines while guiding it. Shared make-believe…
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Why millions watch people chew loudly on camera
Those loud chewing videos offer a controlled dose of sounds that can trigger ASMR for some people: a relaxing, sometimes tingly response to close, repetitive…
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The men who dug human waste from cesspits
A full cesspit was a public-health problem, so men hauled human waste out by hand and carried it away, often to be used as fertilizer. The job made an…
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When doctors treated illness with hungry leeches
When doctors believed illness came from an imbalance of bodily fluids, drawing blood seemed like a way to restore balance. Hungry leeches offered a living…
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Bizarre nineteenth-century trend of creating taxidermy dioramas with dead frogs
A tiny frog in a human-looking scene turns a dead animal into a character. Those Victorian displays made taxidermy do more than preserve a body: they gave…
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The dark secret behind competitive endurance tickling
Reporter David Farrier expected a quirky story when he found videos labeled “competitive endurance tickling.” His questions instead brought hostile responses…
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When funerals hired professional mourners
Professional mourners were hired at funerals in ancient Rome, where praeficae led public lamentation. Their performance helped turn private loss into a shared…
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Why exhaustion makes people overshare
A tired brain has less capacity to monitor every sentence for what should stay unsaid. So the secret, personal detail, or brutally honest opinion can slip out…
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Female tears may dampen aggression in men
In a controlled experiment, men who sniffed women's emotional tears behaved less aggressively in a competitive task than after a saline control. They were not…
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Why groups work around abusers instead of expelling them
Expelling an abuser can threaten a group’s status, routines, or sense of itself. Members may minimize the harm or work around the person to avoid a costly…
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Extreme stress can make the world feel unreal
Under extreme stress, the mind can create distance from what is happening. A familiar room may seem dreamlike, or your own actions may feel as if they belong…
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A trauma therapy asks your attention to do two jobs at once
In EMDR, a therapist guides a person to recall aspects of a traumatic memory while following alternating movements, sounds, or taps. One explanation is that…
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Why a bad option makes the expensive one tempting
A bad option can make a pricey one look like a bargain without changing its price. If one choice is clearly worse on the same features, it becomes a…
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Why brilliant people still believe bizarre things
Being clever gives you more tools for building an argument; it doesn’t guarantee you’ll use those tools to challenge yourself. If a strange belief feels…
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You may not notice when someone is replaced
You don’t inspect every face every second; you rely on the assumption that the person in front of you is still the same person. If your attention is…
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Why happy people sometimes feel the urge to jump
At a height, a sudden thought of jumping can arrive even when someone feels happy. The mind rapidly checks dangerous possibilities and sends an alarm to…
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A parasite's effects on animals inspired a much harder question about people
Toxoplasma can alter behavior in some animal hosts, prompting researchers to look for links with human behavior. Human associations do not by themselves…
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