What would you do if your son wanted to be a girl? Some doctors have a new and troubling answer.
Author: Hanna Rosin | Source: The Atlantic (November2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Individuality, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology
An evolving approach to the science of pleasure suggests that each of us contains multiple selves—all with different desires, and all fighting for control. If this is right, the pursuit of happiness becomes even trickier. Can one self bind” another self if the two want different things? Are you always better off when a Good Self wins? And should outsiders, such as employers and policy … [ Read more ]
Author: Paul Bloom | Source: The Atlantic (November2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior
Airport security in America is a sham—“security theater” designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of prohibited items—as our correspondent did with ease.
Author: Jeffrey Goldberg | Source: The Atlantic (November2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Terrorism
Why asset bubbles are a part of the human condition that regulation can’t cure.
Author: Virginia Postrel | Source: The Atlantic (December2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Culture, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology
A series of vampire novels illuminates the complexities of female adolescent desire.
Author: Caitlin Flanagan | Source: The Atlantic (December2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Literature | Arts, Psychology | Behavior
Fact-checking was a theme of Donald Trump’s first presidency. Journalists kept count of those first-term fictions—30,573 in all, per one count—guided by the optimism that checking the president’s words might also serve as a check on his power. In late 2020, when Trump claimed victory in the presidential election he had lost, scholars saw in his declaration the kind of propaganda … [ Read more ]
Author: Megan Garber | Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Concepts, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Truth | Right | Wrong
An excerpt from the book, The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics.
A wide range of academic scholarship exploring political belief-formation reveals that those who identify themselves as politically conservative, for example, exhibit distinctive values underpinning their world view and their orientation towards political competition.
Conservatives, argues researcher Philip Tetlock of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, are less tolerant of compromise; … [ Read more ]
Author: Thomas B. Edsall | Source: The Atlantic (February 6, 2012) | Subjects: Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy
Jung argued that a good life requires a way of understanding why things happen the way they do, being able to zoom out from the tedious quotidian travails of life, and put events—including inevitable suffering—into perspective… He did not insist that his spiritual path was the only one… and allowed that even a nonreligious, purely philosophical attitude could do. But everyone, he thought, should have … [ Read more ]
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Religion
Negative and positive emotions appear to be separable phenomena and not opposites; well-being requires a focus on each.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Max Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms…
The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” … [ Read more ]
Author: Jonathan Rauch | Source: The Atlantic (February 24, 2025) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump
Happy people can zoom out to see and fully enjoy the world around them. But that means standing up to the lie that you are the center of things. That is the essence of humility and a great secret to happiness.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Happiness, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
The people who are happiest with their lives encounter plenty of suffering too. They don’t seek it, but they also do not consider it to be some sort of sickness; nor are they afraid of it. On the contrary, they know that suffering is necessary to learn and grow. Research shows that experiences of sadness can improve memory, judgment, motivation, and goodness toward others.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Experience, Happiness, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
The author David Brooks … notes in his recent book, How to Know a Person … that a lot of people are “Diminishers,” self-involved to the point that others feel small and unseen. Such Diminishers do this by speaking primarily about themselves—something that, studies show, most people do often—and by failing to ask questions. Brooks contrasts Diminishers with “Illuminators,” who are persistently curious about others, … [ Read more ]
Authors: Arthur C. Brooks, David Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Character, Psychology | Behavior
Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence … [ Read more ]
Author: Peter Wehner | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
True independence involves release from the subjugation of personal urges and weaknesses. We must stand up to our destructive desires to spend more than we have, to drink more than we should, to admire our own image, to fritter away our time, to seek the admiration of others.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
When life becomes tedious to you, [Søren Kierkegaard] argued, you don’t need to look outside for something to shake up your malaise. You need instead to look inward and find what’s missing within your own heart and soul.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Illusion of explanatory depth … is similar to the famous Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how people with low levels of skill in an activity tend to overrate their competence. One explanation for this is “hypocognition,” that people don’t know what they don’t know.
[…]
The overconfidence of people laboring under the illusion of explanatory depth can lead to the spread of misinformation. As researchers have shown, … [ Read more ]
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Psychology | Behavior
This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someone’s ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits. These include the unevenness of any one person’s talents; the specific areas of weakness—social awkwardness, musical tin ear, being stronger with numbers than with words, or vice versa; and the incomparable vastness of … [ Read more ]
Author: James Fallows | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon. But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.” In the … [ Read more ]
Author: Jimmy Carter | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Change, Communication, Concepts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
You need to make a commitment to date the right people for the right reasons. This might mean staying single for longer, looking past some cosmetic imperfections, or seeing a movie or two with someone you might once have dismissed. But in the long run, it’s sure to give you a lot less heartache.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Relationships