Jennifer Baez

Psychology research is clear that the most reliable way to overcome psychological pain and discomfort is not to avoid it; it’s to gradually dimish the effects of discomfort by systematic exposure. “Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it,” write Haidt and Lukianoff.

In other words, the more you face cognitive friction, the

A system is a set of things-people, cells, molecules, or whatever-interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time

In the era of the institutional marriage, from the nation’s founding until around 1850, the prevalence of individual farming households meant that the main requirements Americans had for their marriage revolved around things like food production, shelter and protection from violence.

In the era of the companionate marriage, from roughly 1850 until

Social scientists have long known that we tend to be overconfident when we evaluate ourselves. Here are some highlights of their findings: High school seniors: 70 percent report that they have "above average” leadership skills, compared with 2 percent "below average"; in the ability to get along with others, 25 percent rate themselves in the top 1

One of the most disturbing facts about American marriage today is that while divorce increased at similar rates for the wealthy and the poor in the 1960s and ’70s, those rates diverged sharply starting around 1980. According to the sociologist Steven P. Martin, among Americans who married between 1975 and 1979, the 10-year divorce rate was 28

Such philosophies emphasize that we humans dwell within, not apart from, the network of felt relations, human and ecological, that shape our lives; and that we have possibilities for living creatively and compassionately amid these relations

The lowest-income households in the U.S. on average spend $412 a year on lotto tickets, four times the amount of those in the highest income groups. Forty percent of Americans cannot come up with $400 in an emergency. Which is to say: Those buying $400 in lottery tickets are by and large the same people who say they couldn’t come up with $400 in an