Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

Why are frenemies more stressful than enemies? It’s the unpredictability.

“The Barnum effect refers to the tendency for people to accept as uncannily descriptive of themselves the same generally worded assessment as long as they believe it was written specifically for them on the basis of some ‘diagnostic’ instrument such as a horoscope or personality inventory.”

A long-term study of 736 guys showed friends reduced the likelihood of heart problems. Once again, a romantic partner didn’t.

And research also shows we have a higher bar for rating someone positively than negatively, and our positive impressions are more easily reversed than our negative ones.

National Academy of Sciences has gone on the record, saying that “the Federal government should not rely on polygraph examinations for screening prospective or current employees to identify spies or other national security risks because the test results are too inaccurate.” With as little as fifteen minutes of training, people have been able to con

What is empathy? Empathy is when the line between you and another blurs, when you become confused where you end and another person begins.

If it scares you, say it. You don’t need to go full bore just yet.

people is to be curious. Even better is to provide yourself with some sort of external gain or loss that motivates you.

Instead of focusing on not judging a book by its cover, it would be more useful to say we would be better off putting more effort into revising the judgments we will undoubtedly make.