Psychology

The TV-series Friends was recently reviewed in The New York Times as “enormously easy to watch”. This characteristic however does not make the show unique, nor can it account for its popularity today, more than 15 years since its final episode.

The portrait of a good listener contains skills that are formed over time, through an honest interaction with others, motivated by the desire to understand and help them.

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

They have read that love lasts for two or three years, and although they’ve gathered every possible argument why it wasn't the case for them, they couldn't get the possibility out of their minds altogether.

The concept of self care—defined as the entirety of ways in which a person understands how to solve their emotional problems and manage their anxieties—has become a real movement in the past two years with an entire industry ready to make our lives easier and more comfortable. For Christians, however, this trend has proven to be quite problematic: making our lives easier is...

Before I started looking for the meaning of life, I thought I had already found it. Or, that it had been given to me. In the world I came from, the road was clearly laid out. My life's major events were all mapped out, and precious little was negotiable.

In the February 2023 issue of Signs of the Times, I wrote an article titled Gambling’s Dark Underbelly. Here in Australia, gambling is a multi-billion-dollar industry with a few very rich winners and millions of losers. In the article I concluded that “Gambling in any form is designed to bleed you for as long as you’re willing to bleed, with no regard for...

Nobody likes to lose an argument. The feeling of being proven wrong is never a good one. At best, it might provide a slight dent to your ego or sense of self. At worst, it can be a thoroughly humiliating affair, or reveal that one of the foundations of your beliefs is invalid or misplaced. But no matter where it lands on the...

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

Up until she was 49 years old, Sue Shellenbarger had been happy with her life. She had a nice home in Oregon, USA, and a good job as the Wall Street Journal's work and family columnist. However, in the space of just two years, she had divorced her husband, emptied out her bank account, and developed a real passion for adventure that landed...

Eskimos don't have the word "quarrel" in their vocabulary. They live in a particularly harsh climate, so no one wants to risk getting pneumonia (or dying) just to prove that they are right.

“What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (Job 7:17-18)

Even in difficult times there are many things we can do at home to help children as well as teenagers to feel less worried.

Psychologists recommend all sort of things you should have to develop a healthy and strong mind, like tenacity, ambition or optimism. To achieve this objective, however, there are also some things you should avoid.

We are so familiar with complaining that we don't even recognise its presence in our interactions. It has become part of us—and, according to rumours on the internet, so have its consequences. The whining we are told we do every minute of every conversation has the power to destroy our neurons.