The benefits of learning a foreign language have been well-documented.  It changes the brain, improves memory, and stalls dementia.  But psychologists have found one peculiar thing learning a second language does to us, it makes us take more risk.   It seems that thinking and speaking in a foreign language changes the way we make [...]

When things do not go our way, the first emotion that we are inclined to feel is frustration.  But what if frustration isn't the only option.  What if you replace frustration with curiosity?  The act of substituting one thought for another is aptly called thought substitution in psychology and is one of main tools used [...]

In the book The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings, and the Biology of Boom and Bust, author John Coates talks quite a bit about the biological function of stress and what chronic stress does to the human body. In the 1950s, renowned psychologist Hans Selye believed that the body initiated a stress [...]

According to the NOP World Culture Score Index, India is the country that reads the most, with over 10 hours per week. Thailand and China are second and third, with 9.24 and 8 hours per week respectively. Below you will find the list of the 30 countries that reads the most. Map via Mental Floss [...]

The internet as we know it has come quite a ways in the last three decades.  How far exactly?  Watch the two following videos in chronological order to find out what people thought the internet was, before it became ubiquitous. A news report from 1981 about the Internet and receiving an entire newspaper through the [...]

I just finished the book The Hour Between Dog And Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by neuroscientist John Coates.  It is definitely a good book and I learned quite a bit from it.  If you ever get the chance, I urge you to read it.  Most of the book talked about [...]

This blog has written numerous times about the importance of acute stress for increased mental performance (such as here, here, and here).  But once stress becomes long-term and chronic, it becomes a hindrance.  But more than that, it can lead to mental illness.  Scientists have long known of the link between chronic stress and mental [...]