Mind & Behavior

Mind & Behavior

Study the science of how we think, feel, and act, with insights that help you better understand yourself and others.

A tailless human from a rope.
CRISPR study helps answer a question that has long puzzled scientists.
A melting yellow smiley face on a black background.
15mins
Harvard has conducted an 85-year-long study on what makes humans happy. Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger explains what they found.
BetterHelp
A group of cult members dressed in white participating in an outdoor gathering or ceremony under a partly cloudy sky.
Or are cults the religions we find distasteful?
An image of a person holding a pair of binoculars with the new happy face on it.
Happiness is not a five-star holiday. It's often the result of struggle — and asking for help, as author Stephanie Harrison recently told Big Think.
A pair of headphones on a green background with AI coaching.
AI looks like a natural and inevitable fit for business coaching — but some humans are wary. Here are the pros and cons.
A woman, channeling her best ai humor, is holding a microphone in front of a purple background.
The secret sauce of humor is incongruity. AI knows this as well as we do.
A photo capturing the memory of a woman standing in front of a body of water.
Memories aren’t mental recordings, but pliable information we can use to better manage the present and conjure future possibilities.
A woman holding up a picture of a smiling mouth.
6mins
Pathologically busy people clamoring for happiness. Founder of HATCH Monica Parker explains how we can do so much better than that.
An image of a pelican with its feet in the water, capturing the essence of Stanford Duck Syndrome.
When we view hard work as a sign of low aptitude, it harms our ability to learn and grow.
A teacher in a classroom with children sitting on the floor, learning a second language.
Being bilingual benefits children as they learn to speak — and adults as they age.
A broken alarm clock on a purple background, reminiscent of a Tali Sharot study.
Neuroscientist Tali Sharot recently spoke with Big Think about a two-step method for escaping the dark sides of habits.
An etching of a whale.
When all your teammates fall for "the emperor's new clothes," the results can be disastrous — here's how to bust the groupthink.
A statue of a woman with a red blindfold on her head, symbolizing the human experience in the realm of science.
Here's the case for why science can't keep ignoring human experience.
A blue and white drawing of a person wrapped in a tape illustrating genetic determinism.
Genes are sometimes called the “blueprint of life,” but that doesn't make them the behavioral playbook.
A statue of a man with his hands on his head, symbolizing regret.
A simple dice game shines a bit of light on the psychology of regret.
A black and white photo of a person's brain.
Here's the thorny reality behind psychedelics' ability to unearth buried memories.
Wooden pews in a church provide a traditional seating option for parishioners.
Here's how belief in a higher power can act like a psychological safety net.
A man in a suit is holding a pipe, presenting an air of sophistication.
Bertrand Russell shows us how to recognize emotional arguments smuggled into presumed statements of fact.
A woman in an orange shirt standing in front of a crowd.
About three out of every four people arrested in the U.S. are men. That rate is similar across the world.
A woman feeling the music in a green hat.
After listening to the same playlist, people from the United Kingdom, the United States, and China reported feeling nearly identical bodily sensations.