We can use the concept of an “aspired self” to help distinguish those who are disorganized but wish they weren’t from those disorganized folks who are not bothered by it.

Egon Brunswik. Brunswik’s “lens model,” as it is known, provides a way of understanding how good judgments go bad. Brunswik’s model—which strikes at the heart of the snooper’s art—lays out the two ways you can make accurate judgments (using valid cues and ignoring invalid ones) and the two ways you can make faulty judgments (failing to use valid cu

Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida).

traits provide “a psychology of the stranger.” They paint a portrait in broad brushstrokes but leave out much of the finer detail.

What is it, in concrete terms, that we know after a thousand days of knowing someone that we did not know on day one? McAdams provides a good answer to this question. Getting to know someone, he says, means progressing through three distinct levels of intimacy.

specially designed text-analysis software such as that developed by Pennebaker (and available on his Web site).

I learned that she had been inspired and heartened to realize that even if brilliant achievements go unrecognized early on they can be acclaimed and rewarded much later, sometimes only after a person’s death.

For a good brief introduction to the Big Five, check out Sanjay Srivastava’s Web site: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sanjay/bigfive.html. For a more advanced treatment, see John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five Trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of pe

Of course, most of these calculations are not conscious; we do not actually think a certain person will maximize our genetic prospects, we simply find the person attractive. So a conflict of evolutionary interests underlies the mating game. On one hand we are trying to fool others by appearing as appealing as possible, regardless of the honesty of