Oct 26, 2023

Conservative Extremists Are Afraid of Threats That Don't Exist

Crucially, the pattern of heightened reactivity and credulity toward potential threats characteristic of the conservative mind is not associated with fearfulness or timidity, but with confidence in the ability to triumph through force.

Jul 23, 2023

Evaluating Narratives of Conscious Evolution

Every person is in a position to start consciously evolving their meaning systems for the groups in their own lives.

Feb 28, 2023

Where Do Librarians Fit in the Effort to Improve Mental Immunity?

Misinformation is an epidemic and librarians are the frontline workers.

Feb 21, 2023

Building Mental Immunity

Education will play a central role in strengthening the mental resilience of current and future generations.

Feb 16, 2023

A Tribalism Vaccine

At the core of human adaptation is the solution to the riddle of how a human mind, which was crafted to work with people we know, evolved the instinct to work with people we don’t. But there was a cost, and the result was a seemingly intractable paradox embedded in humanity’s moral compass.

Feb 14, 2023

Are Some False Beliefs Good For You?

Some psychologists champion what they call ‘positive illusions’, mild misapprehensions about ourselves that are conducive to health and happiness

Feb 9, 2023

Mental Immunity, The Group Mind, and Existential Fear

As a highly social species, humans have an evolved tendency to favor the ‘in-group.’ This trait significantly impacts our immunity, or lack of it, to false or harmful information.

Feb 7, 2023

Witch-Hunting: A Lethal Cultural “Virus”?

New research suggests there may have been Darwinian mechanisms behind the evolution of witch-hunting phenomena.

Jan 19, 2023

The Many Faces of Cognitive Immunology

Viewing minds through the lens of cognitive immunology can reveal antidotes to misinformation, disinformation, and information chaos.

Jan 12, 2023

Evolving My View on Mental Immunity

After initially accepting the metaphor of mental immunity as a useful gift from a cherished friend, my more deeply ingrained worldview now appears to be casting doubts upon it.

Jan 10, 2023

Changing A Belief Means Changing How You Feel: The Role of Emotions in Cognitive Immunology

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there’s no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Dec 15, 2022

Bad Ideas Recruit the Mind’s Immune System to Protect Themselves

Some bad ideas get past a mind’s defenses and then hijack the mind’s immune system. These bad ideas recruit the mind’s defenses to protect themselves, even if that recruitment ends up harming the mind that hosts it.

Dec 13, 2022

The Analogy of/and Inoculation Theory to Mental Immunity

Models from epidemiology are increasingly used to better understand how misinformation spreads in online networks.

Dec 6, 2022

The Science of Mental Immunity Has Arrived

The emerging field of “cognitive immunology” may hold solutions to our world’s growing disinformation problems.

Aug 23, 2022

The Anxiety Epidemic in Children: What are the Causes?

Rates of anxiety and depression have been rising in children since the 1980’s and might have accelerated during the last ten years.

Oct 28, 2021

Will to Fight for the Future Can’t Be Bought

Only by understanding the psychology of sacred values can we predict the willingness to sacrifice for those values.

Feb 9, 2021

Martin Luther Rewired Your Brain

Feb 2, 2021

Does Competition Increase Trust?

Research shows that when a person moves into a more competitive industry their trust tends to increase.

Jan 26, 2021

Why Immigration Drives Innovation

U.S. immigration is but one example of how the interactions of many diverse minds—our collective brains—drive innovation and ultimately economic growth.

Dec 22, 2020

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Symbolic Thought and Communication

Are there universal features of grammar and syntax?

Dec 18, 2020

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Learning

Can variation and selection within a lifetime be thought of evolutionarily?

Dec 15, 2020

Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: Introduction

This groundbreaking series of conversations seek to integrate Evolutionary Science and Contextual Behavioral Science with a larger audience.

Aug 4, 2020

Bringing Neuroscience and Sociology into Dialogue on Emotions to Better Understand Human Behavior

What this potential marriage suggests is there are great possibilities for research, particularly around social relationships.

Mar 6, 2020

The Taxonomy of Human Evolved Psychological Adaptations

PsychTable.org is an open-science taxonomy devoted to uncovering the richness and complexity of our evolved human behavior.

Jan 28, 2020

Is Evolutionary Psychology Impossible?

Subrena Smith recently argued that “evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is…impossible."

Jan 15, 2020

Why Evolutionary Psychology (Probably) Isn’t Possible

Evolutionary psychologists have not shown that there are specific psychological programs that are written in the genetic foundation of our species. This is the challenge they must meet. Header image credit to ClaudeAI.uk

Oct 3, 2019

Seven Reasons Why Most Major Depression is Probably Not a Brain Disorder

If most MD, as it is currently diagnosed, is not a disorder, should we keep calling it Major Depression?

Mar 2, 2016

TVOL Special Edition: What’s Wrong (and Right) About Evolutionary Psychology?

This Special Edition features a diverse collection of articles on evolutionary psychology by proponents, critics, and scientists, with the aim to clarify the subject for everyone, from experts to the general public.

Mar 22, 2015

Evolutionary Psychology Is Neither