Psychology

Evidence shows that arguing our case rarely convinces others. It’s social relationships and actions that have that powerSarah Stein Lubrano is the author of Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century MindsIt may seem paradoxical to write this in an opinion piece. But it needs saying: arguments alone have no meaningful effect on people’s beliefs. And the implicit societal acceptance that they do is getting in the way of other, more effective forms of political thinking and doing.I’m a researcher who studies the intersection of psychology and politics, and my work has increasingly led me to believe that our culture’s understanding of how political persuasion works is wrong..

I was told my life would change if I let strangers prod my deepest wounds. But I wasn’t sure: were these group training sessions empowering or exploitative?On a Saturday in March in a conference room with ugly carpeting near Los Angeles international airport, I meekly muttered “thank you” as a group of six people – all strangers until the day before – enumerated my deepest flaws.“I see you, Katherine, as inauthentic,” led the charge. Continue reading...

A new study says that, as well as causing stress and anxiety, overwork increases grey matter, which isn’t as beneficial as it soundsName: The 52-hour work week.Age: Relatively new – our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably only worked for 15 hours a week. Continue reading...

My father, Chris Gathercole, who has died aged 87, was a pioneering clinical psychologist. He was an advocate for people with learning disabilities being involved in decisions about themselves and for them to be independent.He worked at large hospitals in Glasgow, Liverpool, North Wales and Lancashire, where he introduced innovative American concepts such as “social role valorisation”. The idea behind it was to improve the lives of those with disabilities, emphasising the importance of people having a place in society, their wellbeing and making sure they had and access to the “good things of life”, such as relationships and employment. Continue reading...

Prince Harry and King Charles will need to put past grievances to one side if they are to move on from their estrangement, experts sayFor most families, fallouts and squabbles are a regular occurrence. But what happens when those rifts deepen to an estrangement, such as appears to have beset the royal family and the Beckhams, and how can relationships be rebuilt?According to the following psychologists and psychotherapists, family reconciliation requires both sides taking accountability for their behaviour and not letting past grievances and trauma block efforts to meaningfully re-engage with estranged relatives. Continue reading...

It can happen when doing ‘just about anything’ – experts share how to get ‘in the zone’, and what can pull you outWhat is the secret to happiness? In a 2004 Ted Talk, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi boldly claimed to have the answer: flow.Flow is the experience of being completely absorbed in a particular task. Sometimes we call it being “in the zone”. Csikszentmihalyi described it in his Ted Talk as an “effortless, spontaneous feeling” and an “ecstatic state”.An intense focus that “leads to a sense of ecstasy”Knowing exactly what you want from one moment to the nextGetting immediate feedback on what you are doingKnowing your goal is achievable, even if it is d..

Science correspondent Hannah Devlin joins Ian Sample to discuss three intriguing science stories from the week, from a global study that puts the UK third from bottom when it comes to flourishing, to a man who intentionally suffered more than 200 snake bites in the quest to find a universal antivenom and a breakthrough in the quest to understand the contents of the charred Herculaneum scrolls buried when Mount Vesuvius eruptedUK among lowest-ranked countries for ‘human flourishing’ in wellbeing studySnake collector’s immunity quest opens path towards universal antivenomX-ray reveals ancient Greek author of charred first century BC Vesuvius scroll Continue reading...

A new study has found that helping sufferers manage their emotions lessens their experience of chronic painWhen Jabez Allies developed chronic lower back pain 10 years ago, her doctor sent her to the physio, who recommended different types of stretching and exercises – some that helped, some that didn’t help at all – as well as hot-water bottles and painkillers.But as the pain got progressively worse every year, so too did Allies’ feelings of being overwhelmed – frustrated she couldn’t do the things she could before and spiralling into hopelessness that there was nothing she could do to fix it.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Beyond self-help mantras like ‘Let them’, radical acceptance shows us the value in learning how to truly accept life just the way it isHave you ever been in the middle of difficult life circumstances to be told “let it go” or “don’t dwell on it” as if it were a simple choice?Such advice can have the effect of minimising our distress and abruptly changing the subject. Yet it is not the phrases themselves that are troubling – there is real substance to them – but the missed opportunity to grasp the true meaning of what Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls “radical acceptance”. Continue reading...

It would now be easier for us if Dad had sorted things before he died but the process of emptying his house allowed me to see him differentlyGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI was browsing in a recycled clothing shop recently when I started talking to a woman who was holidaying in Melbourne. She wanted my opinion on a brightly coloured jacket she was eyeing. Laughing because I was in my usual uniform of whatever black clothes were clean, I told her it looked great and urged her to buy it. But she wavered, admitting that although she’d begun hunting out more unusual clothes since retirement, she was also in the process of shedding her belongings.I’d heard about “Swedish death ..

Is Anthony Albanese charismatic? Peter Dutton? Charisma has been linked to electoral victory (just ask Bob Hawke), but defining it can be difficultGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastFor all the gen Z slang that has been thrown around by politicians in recent months, one term has been largely absent from the election campaign: “rizz”. Oxford University Press’s 2023 word of the year is defined as “style, charm or attractiveness”; in gen Z parlance it refers specifically to romantic appeal.On the campaign trail, neither major party leader, thankfully, has deployed the term to cringeworthy effect. But a trait to which rizz is inextricably linked – charism..

I need to stop dwelling on everything I get wrong, from sending my ball into the drink to squeezing the wrong bottomWhether you’re into sport or not, there’s wisdom to be mined from it. Once you’ve picked your way through the platitudes, banalities and cliche there’s gold in there.Rory McIlroy’s famous victory at the US Masters earlier this month yielded, for me anyway, a particularly good example. McIlroy’s psychologist, Bob Rotella, has been credited with helping his man develop golf’s key mental skill: putting your bad shots behind you and barely giving them a second thought. Continue reading...

A bracingly hopeful call for high-flyers to ditch corporate drudgery in favour of something far more ambitiousThis is not a self-help book,” the author tells us, firmly. Appearances might suggest otherwise: it is written and presented almost entirely in the familiar style of that genre, with largish print, short sentences, snappy maxims in italics and lots of lists and charts (“six signs you may be on the wrong side of history”). Its proposals are delivered with all the annoyingly hectic bounciness of the genre.But it is worth taking Bregman (a thirtysomething historian and author labelled “one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers” by the Ted network) at his word. He be..

One day, life as a finance consultant stopped making sense for Peter Hahn, so he took to organic winegrowing in the Loire insteadOne Friday night 24 years ago, Peter Hahn was sitting in the back of a cab to Heathrow, sleepless after yet another 48-hour work bender.“My computer’s on my lap,” the American-born organic winegrower from France recalls, the spring sun lighting up the deep pink walls of his study in his ancient manor house in the Loire Valley, his beloved vines outside, “and I’m doing a spreadsheet. Continue reading...

Instead of alarmism or shaming, we need to create spaces where young men feel heard, challenged and supportedGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailFor years, we’ve looked at democracies like the US, Germany and South Korea, disturbed by what a nation divided along gender and generation lines could look like. Australia, by comparison, seemed less polarised, but new research hints that something’s starting to shift – slowly, unevenly and with plenty of caveats – among young Australians too.But let’s not jump the gun – because the story is more complicated than it first appears, and framing “young men” as a purely reactionary force isn’t going to get us anywhere helpful. ..

The pressure’s off when we’re not staring at each other, we can relax and have a nice chatOn the day after Boxing Day last year, my dad and I went to buy some cabbage. My aunt and cousins were joining us for dinner that evening and we had a meal to prepare. The local supermarket was closed and the cabbage, sourced from an Italian deli around the corner, was obscenely overpriced. In a bind, we bought some anyway and headed back home to begin cooking. Standing around the kitchen island chopping and peeling vegetables, preparing a rib of beef and assembling a side dish of dauphinoise potatoes, we listened to music and chatted. The meal was a success and the cabbage – lightly browned and d..

The authors of a new book explain why understanding the science of stress can help us manage it betterTrue (up to a point)The way stress manifests is very much bodily, centred around hormones such as cortisol and their effect on us. But this process is triggered by the brain (notably the amygdala and the hypothalamus) and the way our brains react to stress is often set in early childhood, even in the womb. Pregnant women who experience extreme stress can give birth to infants who react more strongly to stress hormones – with increasing evidence suggesting that this causes modifications to the baby’s DNA. Self-actualising your way out of stress is difficult – not least because the cause..

Readers respond to George Monbiot’s piece on how economic inequality fosters resentment, exclusion and nostalgiaGeorge Monbiot (Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature, 13 April) makes some very important points about the psychology of those who follow demagogues and rightwing populist leaders. But this knowledge is not new. After the horrors of the rise of the Nazis and the persecution by them of Jews and other minority groups before and during the second world war, psychologists, many of them Jewish, began to systematically study the origins of such hatred. One was Henri Tajfel, a Jew born in Poland whose family were murdered by the Nazis.Tajfel..

My father, Nick Heather, who has died aged 86, was a clinical psychologist with an international reputation in alcohol and addiction research, and published more than 500 articles and more than 20 books. He was tireless and uncompromising in his efforts to advance the understanding and treatment of alcohol problems, especially in challenging the disease model of addiction.Perhaps his most significant contribution was pioneering “brief interventions” (short counselling sessions), now a key component of efforts used by medical professionals to reduce alcohol problems worldwide. He conducted the first randomised controlled trial, in 1985, and continued to advance their theoretical understan..

It’s deeply human to seek approval and recognition from a parent, even when we are fully grownThe question I’m a man in my late 50s. My parents were teenagers when I was born. They married so I wouldn’t be illegitimate, it was the 1960s. My parents divorced. My mum and stepdad moved up north, my father remarried and stayed down south.My father and his wife have three children, now in their 40s. My stepdad killed himself when I was in my early 20s, but I’ve come to realise he was much more of a parent to me than my actual father. Continue reading...

A neuroscientist decided to study the addiction-like obsession of limerence, while overcoming it himselfI never really gave much thought to the nature of love until it became a problem.Throughout adolescence I suffered through a series of intense, mostly unrequited crushes, but just assumed this was the exquisite agony of desire that poets and lyricists work so hard to capture in words. Continue reading...

Sorry seems to be the hardest word – and there is a public appetite for watching high-profile feudsMadonna and Elton John have kissed and made up. After decades of high-octane feuding (more of which anon), Madonna recently turned up impromptu backstage when John was appearing on late-night television sketch show, Saturday Night Live in New York to “confront” him. Her ensuing Instagram post, liked 420,605 times and counting, said: “Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist”.Madonna continued: “When I met him, the first thing out of his mouth was ‘Forgive me’, and the walls between us fell down.” Continue..

It is a simple and powerful way to help them feel calmer and happier, say the experts. So how do you teach kindness to kids?In a hostile world, many parents might be anxious about how to raise a kinder generation – and if so, science backs you. Children who are more empathetic “tend to have more positive interactions and more satisfying relationships with friends and family,” says Jessica Rolph, co-founder of early childhood development company Lovevery. Studies show that kids who can form strong relationships do better in school, she adds.And Jaime Thurston, chief executive of the School of Kindness, says it’s “the most important thing we can teach children”. She adds: “Kindne..

Considering everyone is a protagonist in their own narrative brought clarity for Will StorrFor nearly 20 years, I’ve been researching and writing about the human brain as a storyteller. My work has unalterably changed the way I see the human world in general, and myself in particular. It has helped me understand everything from political hatred and religions to cults to the nature of identity and suicidal thought. It has even made sense of my own lifelong struggle with making friends.Our evolution into Homo narrans, the storytelling animal, is the secret of our success. Like other animals, humans exist in a realm of survival in which we seek sustenance, safety and procreation. But, uniquel..

This inner critic isn’t you, it’s just a voice that has been given far too much authorityThe question I am struggling with intrusive and increasingly critical self-talk around my appearance. So much so that some days I struggle to look in the mirror. I’ve recently had a baby and assumed that my long history of feeling ugly, lesser and fundamentally inadequate would be surpassed by being a mother and having an external concern other than myself but, if anything, it’s worse.It has become so bad I have convinced myself that my partner will find someone else despite him being lovely, reassuring and committed. I know this cognitively, but emotionally I feel deeply flawed as a woman and ug..

While the act may help some, it can harm others, says Amanda Ann GregoryWhile I deeply respect the work of Fred Luskin and Robert Enright, psychologists should be careful not to suggest that forgiveness is beneficial for everyone (Leave the hurt behind! How to let go of a grudge, 26 March). It isn’t. There is no one-size-fits-all solution in mental health. While forgiveness may help some, it can harm others.Trauma survivors are often encouraged to forgive their abusers, with the promise that it will aid their healing. However, there’s no evidence to support the idea that forgiveness improves trauma recovery. Mandatory forgiveness can, in fact, impede healing and is a major reason ma..

‘Follow your instincts’ has become a modern mantra. But what if they lead you astray? ‘What should I do?” Whether openly stated or implicit, this is the question a new client usually raises in their first therapy session. People come to see me for many reasons: relationship problems, addiction and mental health difficulties, such as anxiety. Increasingly, I have found that beneath all of these disparate problems lies a common theme: indecision, the sense of feeling stuck, and lack of clarity as to the way forward.Making decisions is difficult. Anyone who has lain awake contemplating a romantic dilemma, or a sudden financial crisis, knows how hard it can be to choose a course of actio..

For one writer, tragedy led to comedy, the sudden loss of a colleague giving her the nudge she neededThere’s nothing funny about your co-worker being assassinated. But it was the death of my beloved colleague and friend Hisham al-Hashimi that led me into the world of standup comedy. I knew it would trash my hard-won career in international security, but I didn’t care any more.Hisham had run a workshop with me in Iraq six months prior to his death, and I’d taken everything so seriously, marching around the hotel yelling about how everything was going wrong. But Hisham always had a lightness in his step, a smile on his face. Every evening, he’d take me to a café, order me my favourite..

Now I understand the terminology, it all seems so clearMore summer essentialsI never identified as shy as a child because my younger brother was the type of kid who wouldn’t speak in the company of strangers, and I – apparently – never stopped talking. Shyness was comparative, and, in my family of origin, there was always someone shyer than me.I didn’t notice my shyness until I split with my first long-term partner when I was 26. He’d been my boyfriend from the age of 14, so – by the time we parted – almost half my life. This first boyfriend was gregarious, always ready for a chat. He had a way of walking into a room and cracking a joke, so by the time I entered on his tailwind..

Resentment is natural when you’ve been wronged, but over time it can become bitter and self-defeating. Psychologists explain how to move onAt some point in the late 70s, during a Brownies meeting, something happened to Deborah that she has never been able to forget. Well, she can’t actually remember exactly what the incident was, but she knows the perpetrator – another girl, who still lives in her town. “I think she might have pushed me,” says Deborah. “I think she might have said something mean to me.” Whatever it was, she has held a “deep grudge against her for 46 years”.It affected her deeply at the time. Deborah (not her real name) had been bullied at school, but says s..