Sublime

emotional intelligence—an ability to understand and regulate one’s own feelings and desires.

If you unwittingly study these peculiar modern populations without realizing the powerful impact that technologies, beliefs, and social norms related to literacy have on our brains and mental processes, you can get the wrong answers. This can happen even when you study seemingly basic features of psychology and neuroscience, like memory, visual pro

Tribal members act in concert on the strength of one simple question: “Do people like me do something like this?” If the answer is yes, they do it. And if the answer is no, then they don’t. It’s as simple as that. We may not even be aware that we’re working through this framework, but make no mistake, it is indeed at work within the mind of every s

An enormous number of people have influenced my thinking, but three were particularly important: William Braud, Barbara Babcock, and Edmund Leach. Parapsychologist William Braud integrated an enormous range of findings with his model of lability and inertia in psi processes. Barbara Babcock is the most significant interpreter of the trickster figur

the individual must trust the organization.”

In 1995, two social psychologists, Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, put forth what they called “the belongingness hypothesis.” They proposed that “a need to belong is a fundamental human motivation . . . and that much of what human beings do is done in the service of belongingness.” Other thinkers, including Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow, had made

Having theory of mind is to know that someone else believes something.

It’s hard to find meaning in what we do if at some level it doesn’t help someone else or make someone happier.