“Pain is both physical and emotional one hundred percent of the time.”
Pain feels like a simple message from the body. But according to psychologist @DrZoffness, it is also an act of interpretation. This week, she examines how the brain decides whether to sound the pain alarm,
In April 2017, a woman was trapped between the doors of a New York City subway train.
Half in. Half out. Motionless.
A cell phone video showed three people walking past, but none of them helped. 🧵
Psychologists have a name for what happens when many people can help in a crisis, but no one does.
It's called the bystander effect.
Everyone waits for someone else to act first.
Help did come eventually for the woman. Subway workers pried the doors open.
But the video of the moment stays with us.
Because underneath it is a question most of us are afraid to ask.
If I were the one in need of help, would anyone stop?
The job loss. The car repair that cost a small fortune. The growing credit card balance. Economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir found that financial scarcity taxes the brain the same way hunger does. It consumes mental bandwidth and leaves less room for everything else.
Why do you feel a knot in your stomach before asking a stranger for a favor?
Cornell psychologist Vanessa Bohns has an answer.
And it means you're walking around underestimating your influence on everyone you meet.🧵
Bohns discovered this as a graduate student at Columbia. Her job was to walk up to strangers in Penn Station and ask them to fill out a survey.
Every time, her palms would sweat. She expected rejection.
Then her professor looked at the data and was surprised to see how many
You underestimate your influence on strangers, coworkers, and the people closest to you.
Every time you don't ask for what you need, you may be guessing incorrectly about how the other person will respond.
In the late 17th century, a Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer watched homesick soldiers stationed far from their mountain homes. They couldn't eat or sleep.
He decided their condition was a brain disease and gave it a name: nostalgia. 🧵
Researchers have found that at an individual level, nostalgia can actually make us more optimistic about the future. More invested in our relationships.
But at a collective level, nostalgia can erase the complexity and contradictions from a nation's memory.
In other words, nostalgia makes a wonderful companion and a terrible compass.
Lean on it for comfort, and it steadies you. Try to navigate by it, and it lies to you about where you've been.
When did you last stop to actually watch a sunset? Psychologist Dacher Keltner finds that experiencing awe makes people feel physically smaller, and their problems less significant. He calls it the "small self effect." Awe was most commonly reported during simple walks outside.
It’s human nature to plan for the future — set goals, generate expectations, and hope for the best. But life sometimes throws you a curveball.
In this week's episode, we revisit a conversation with psychologist and neuroscientist @NormanFarb about how we plan for the future, and
