Psychology
How kind is humankind?
Are humans by nature really more puppy than wolf? Oren Harman tests the science
Being diagnosed as autistic was the happiest day of my life
It’s easy to forget that until the late 1980s the notion of an autistic person being able to write a…
Are you tingle-minded? The rapid rise of ASMR
I once had a flatmate called Tom, who behaved very oddly when our cleaner came round. On mornings when she…
Is the judiciary really so bad at judging character?
When I had a cough last week, my son Joe, who has autism, shouted at me and covered his ears.…
Levitating basketball players: investigating the psychic in sport
Years ago, a friend persuaded me that a reviewer should almost never give a book a bad review. Most books,…
The personality test that conned the world
The other day in the Guardian’s Blind Date column, two participants, or victims, finished off an account of their frightful…
My ex-lover’s T-shirt can join the other tragic tat in the Museum of Broken Relationships
I loved a man. But our affair was nasty, brutish and short. Copious weeping was my un-tart retort. All that’s…
The subtle art of showing off at work
This has been an interesting year for me. Back in January, I took up a full-time job as director of…
The rich literature of the game of poker
According to the subtitle, this is a collection of ‘short stories of long nights at the poker table’. Were that…
Help over the hump
Losing our way in life’s trackless forest, whither should we turn for solace and advice? Wisdom used to be the…
Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
Warning: rationality could be bad for your health
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
What could Muslim women do within 48 miles of home? Almost everything
Secrets of the stars The astrologer Jonathan Cainer died after beginning his last horoscope for his own star sign: ‘We’re…
Why it makes sense to buy your banker lunch
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
Books aren’t medicine. They’re more powerful than that
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
It’s not work that’s stressful. It’s offices
It’s not work that’s killing us. It’s the irritation and confusion of modern office life
What makes Argos worth £1.4 billion? I reckon I know
When I was at school in the 1970s, some of the richer kids would come back from their summer holidays…
Always obey your satnav? Then you can vote rationally on the EU
In many ways a satnav is a miraculous device. A network of US military satellites more than 10,000 miles above…
Are all moody teenagers potential Columbine killers?
On an April morning in 1999, two teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, walked into Columbine High School in Colorado…
Keith Moon’s wedding-night abseil and other marvellous false memories
False memory disasters, from Keith Moon’s wedding-night abseil to Sophia Loren’s peanut addiction
The 5 per cent of people who decide everything (and how to be one of them)
What happens when 95 per cent of people like something, but 5 per cent of people prefer something else? You might think…
No golf, no bridge, scared of champagne – it’s tough being a leftie
No golf, no bridge, a tortured relationship with champagne… lefties deserve your sympathy, not your scorn
How contactless cards will change the world (much more than you think)
I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There…
Dinners for beginners
Never mind teaching children to cook: they need to be taught to eat. Obvious? Totally, but this is the choosing…
A morally dubious mix of Candid Camera and Fawlty Towers: Pushed to the Edge reviewed
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
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