Tomorrow is Halloween, which leads to thoughts of ghosts, witches, vampires and scary pumpkin faces. But year round, many people believe a full moon is linked with other spooky stuff. Crime rates, psychiatric hospital admissions, emergency room visits, dog bites, sporting injuries and hyperactivity in kids are all said to increase during a full moon. Is there any truth to the rumours? Bad moon rising Also known as the Transylvania Effect, the idea that people […]
Waiting in line at the grocery, you hesitate to move to another counter when it opens up. Even though you’re not looking forward to seeing it, you head to a movie you’ve already paid for. You stay in a career or relationship that no longer ‘sparks joy’. Tara Bautista asks why we cling on when we should let go. Going down with the ship Humans are weird creatures. We prize our supposedly unrivalled ability to […]
It’s Friday afternoon. You’ve known for weeks your final report is due by the end of the day. But somehow you’ve managed to put off working on it until now. And you can’t possibly get it done in time. Sound familiar? According to one researcher, procrastination is ‘a common pulse of humanity’. Why do we procrastinate and how can we stop? Just do it……soon Procrastination is ‘voluntarily delaying an intended course of action despite expecting […]
Think back to how you behaved as a teenager. Are you cringing? Many of us feel very different to the person we were ‘back then’. But are you different? And what will you be like in old age? Who are you? Have you ever done a personality test? I have: I was intrigued to find out if answering a few dozen questions could give an accurate picture of who I am. Whether Myer-Briggs, the Big Five, […]
When was the last time you laughed out loud? Can you remember what set you off? It turns out laughing is more complex than it might appear: we laugh for many different reasons. And some of them aren’t that funny. Is laughter the best medicine? Laughter has been claimed to be good for just about everything, from boosting the immune system, to decreasing stress and lowering blood pressure. There’s some evidence laughter protects against heart disease and […]
As cute as a… button? Puppy? Kitten? Panda cub? There’s no shortage of things we respond to by saying ‘Awwww, that’s so cute’. But what is it exactly that we find cute, and why? And why do we often feel an overwhelming urge to squeeze cute things?
Have you ever been to a pheromone party? The idea is to find your perfect partner based on smell, yep: body odour. All you need is a smelly t-shirt, a zip-lock bag and an open mind. We know pheromones play a huge role in the animal world, but scientists can’t agree if the same is true for us.
If you could control your dreams, what would you do? Many of us do have some control over our dreams. It’s called lucid dreaming and if you can’t already do it, you may be able to learn how.
Most young kids do it. Michael Jordan was famous for it. And it’s quite possible you do it too. What am I talking about? Sticking your tongue out when you concentrate. It’s incredibly common and over the years there have been a variety of theories attempting to explain the habit. Recent research supports the suggestion it’s connected to the way humans evolved spoken language. A quirky tongue? Next time you have the opportunity, watch a […]
Have you got a big birthday coming up, one that ends in a zero? And have you made any major life decisions recently? Although we measure time using a continuous scale, research has shown that in the year before a milestone birthday, people are more likely to reflect on their lives and make significant changes.
Dr Jen Martin 