Psychology

Psychology

A new paper by Mei Kei Leong and colleagues (2025), from Taylor's University in Malaysia, provides important perspectives on narcissism's facets and its connection to toxicity in leaders. Noting that "the desire for admiration and power" drives them to "engage in more self-promotion and seek recognition than less narcissistic leaders," the literature is less clear on whether these strategies work or not.

Recent advances in neuroscience indicate that the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex plays a central role in rapidly evaluating potential romantic partners, often without conscious awareness. Key findings show that specific regions within this cortex are responsible for making swift assessments, and these neural patterns can reliably predict whether someone will express romantic interest or decide to pursue further interaction after just a brief encounter.

My parents named me Mwangi after my grandfather, James Mwangi Wanjau. I grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and Mwangi is a very common name within my tribe, the Kikuyu. In 2016, at age 19, I moved from Kenya to western Canada to study, graduating with a degree in mathematics. I felt like an outsider. My name stood out: I often had to repeat it, and people struggled to remember it.

In the history of psychology, some of the deepest insights have come from asking a deceptively simple question: What if you could step into someone else's skin? For decades, psychologists have tried to make society more inclusive by asking people to imagine what life is like for someone different from them, but imagination only goes so far. You can picture what it might be like to roll into a job interview in a wheelchair, or to navigate a crowded hallway with limited mobility,

Bilingualism is often seen only as a practical skill for communication, but research in educational psychology shows it is far more. It fuels children's learning capacity, social development, and emotional growth, allowing them to see the world through multiple perspectives (Antoniou, Pliatsikas, & Schroeder, 2023). One of the most powerful benefits of bilingualism is its impact on higher-order thinking skills. Researchers call this the executive function advantage, the set of mental processes that support self-control, flexible thinking, and working memory.

Have you ever had a facepalm moment when you're troubleshooting a problem, and suddenly a cause or solution you'd overlooked becomes obvious? You sheepishly realize you'd wasted time going down the wrong track. This happened to me recently. I was working on a coding project, and a small error was driving me batty. I kept asking an AI chatbot to fix my code, but none of the fixes solved it.

The problem of people falling for falsehoods has become an urgent issue in recent years, as new technologies have conspired with sociopolitical currents within the culture to spread misinformation at unprecedented speed and reach. Psychologists who study this issue have focused mainly on individual vulnerabilities: the cognitive quirks and biases that predispose us to believe falsehoods, buy into lies, and give in to speculation.

We were walking home from the grocery store in West Yorkshire, England, when a group of teenage boys blocked our path in a narrow alleyway. They hurled racist insults and told us to "go back home." My reaction was instantaneous: Stay quiet, avoid conflict, and get past them as quickly as possible. I grabbed my mother's arm, urging her to move with me. But she didn't.

Kitty and Jose Menendez were watching TV and eating ice cream in their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989, when their sons, Erik and Lyle, came in and shot them. Lyle blamed organized crime, deflecting the investigation, but a guilt-ridden Erik confessed to a therapist. The young men were arrested. They went through two sensational trials before both were finally convicted.

In the 1890s, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov noticed how dogs began salivating not just when food was placed in front of them, but when they heard the footsteps of the person bringing the food. He ran experiments where he'd ring a bell right before he fed his dogs. After repeating this several times, the dogs started salivating at the sound of the bell alone, no food needed.

As a psychological scientist who studies sexting, I've had people ask me for all kinds of sexting advice and facts, from "How can I prevent my images from being used against me?" to "How does sexting affect young people?" to "Am I weird or what?" A quick Google search doesn't always help with these questions, returning sexting tips and tricks from Cosmo ("60 hot sexting ideas for your inspiration") adjacent to headlines like "Can sexting get you arrested?" from Teen Vogue.

I know I mentioned my profession to him, but I am pretty sure he was the one who engaged me that way. I also know how diabolically good a chatbot can be at saying what is on the tip of your tongue, and doing it before you can, and better than you might have. That makes me feel less troubled by my uncertainty.

In his book The Narrative Brain: The Stories Our Neurons Tell, he points out that most of the Grimm brothers' fairy tales center on the vulnerability of their heroes. This vulnerability is often borne out of an earlier trauma-abandonment or orphanhood, for example-which leaves its character hypervigilant to danger and presumably with a certain level of cunning at recognizing and responding to that threat.

Is aggression part of our primate nature, wired into our systems because it helps us survive, or do we learn it from such seemingly innocent occupations as watching cartoons and wrestling matches on TV? Can the answer be both? There is evidence in support of both a genetic, evolutionary source for human aggression, and for the role of observational learning in its acquisition.

This phenomenon is referred to as selective attention, and a famous study designed by Simons and Chabris (1999) demonstrated it quite well. For their research, these scientists showed a video to student volunteers featuring players passing basketballs back and forth, one team in white t-shirts, and the other team in black t-shirts. The viewers were instructed to count the passes between players wearing the white t-shirts.

I have three daughters, and while I assumed most eldest daughters of the family are bred that way by Type-A moms, it seems my own eldest daughter - who is most definitely not being raised by a Type-A mom - has already taken on some of the classic characteristics. Like when she sees me attempting a DIY project and asks for my phone so she can prepare to dial 911.