Psychology

Psychology

When people hit their sixties, there's this assumption that life becomes less flexible, that routines become rigid out of necessity rather than choice. But here's what I've learned from watching the most mentally resilient older adults around me: those who genuinely enjoy their daily rhythms aren't stuck in their ways. They're actually displaying something remarkable. Psychology research suggests that finding comfort in your own routines after 60 isn't about being inflexible or resistant to change.

Have you ever walked into a room and immediately sensed tension, even though everyone was smiling and chatting normally? That's because you're picking up on microexpressions, body language, and energy shifts that others might miss. Research from the University of Cambridge shows that people who spend more time observing develop stronger emotional recognition abilities. They become experts at reading between the lines, catching those fleeting expressions that reveal what someone really thinks or feels.

But here's what I've learned: the most powerful response isn't to match their energy or disappear into the background. It's to stay calm and use specific phrases that completely flip the script. Growing up, I watched my father navigate thirty years of sales management with varying degrees of success. Some days he'd come home victorious after defusing a tense situation.

Henry Ford famously noted, "Whether you think you can do it or not, you are usually right." His point was that beliefs, especially about our talents, performance, and even luck, can be self-fulfilling. Irrespective of whether they are right or wrong, they will become true by influencing objective success outcomes. Ford was hardly alone. Along the same lines, decades of psychological research show that beliefs matter, often profoundly so.

One view is that in relationships, differences in personality are adaptive because people can complement each other. For example, one might assume that someone who is very messy could function better in a relationship with a tidy partner than with another person who is also very messy. On the other hand, a contrasting view is that personality similarity is more adaptive. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine that a messy person may feel more at ease with like-minded messy persons.

'Have you ever noticed how your day starts?' Khan asks in a YouTube video on his channel, The Brain Project. 'You open your eyes, and your hands already know what to do. Same apps, same path to the kitchen, same routines you never actually chose. 'It feels automatic because, well, it is. Habits aren't a personality trait, they're neural shortcuts your brain builds to save energy.'

The reality TV show, which sees 22 people from across the UK participate in a weeks-long social deduction game to work out who amongst them is secretly a " Traitor ", aired the acclaimed finale to its tense fourth season on Friday (23 January). Contestants and this season's surviving Traitors, Stephen Libby and Rachel Duffy, bagged £95,750 during Friday night's conclusion, which was watched by over 9.6 million people according to the BBC.

In 2011, researchers Jason Tangen, Sean Murphy, and Matthew Thompson at the University of Queensland discovered a striking visual illusion while preparing a set of face images for a study. As they were going quickly through the faces to check their spatial alignment, they started noticing that the faces appeared highly distorted, almost cartoonish. They then realized that these distortions were most pronounced when the faces were flashed about 4-5 times per second in peripheral vision.

But here's what I've learned after interviewing over 200 people: The real test of mental strength isn't how brilliant you are in your prime. It's whether you can maintain certain crucial traits as the decades roll by. Think about it. Anyone can be resilient when they have the energy of youth on their side. But can you bounce back from setbacks when you're sixty? Can you stay curious when you've "seen it all"? That's where true mental strength reveals itself.

A revealing example is the concept of " grudging respect."What is typically meant by the term is not respect at all but fear-based compliance. From a psychological perspective, behavior driven by fear is externally regulated; people comply to avoid negative consequences rather than because they feel heard, valued, or internally motivated. When someone obeys out of intimidation or pressure, the foundation for meaningful negotiation is absent (even if one party appears to win).

Since the recent shooting death of a Minnesota woman, Renee Good, by an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, there has been a flood of high-profile political and social responses, from the early conclusions by federal officials to the growing number of protests-and even more recently, to the mass resignation of prosecutors. The news has been emotionally overwhelming to many and doesn't seem to be subsiding.

Anti-intelligence is not stupidity or some sort of cognitive failure. It's the performance of knowing without understanding. It's language severed from memory, context, and and even intention. It's what large language models (LLMs) do so well. They produce coherent outputs through pattern-matching rather than comprehension. Where human cognition builds meaning through the struggle of thought, anti- intelligence arrives fully formed.

We've all been there: mid-story, mid-vent, mid-enthusiastic ramble, and suddenly the other person's energy shifts. Their smile fades. Their eyes wander down to their phone. Their whole body seems to quietly scream: "Please stop." Most of us don't realize when we're annoying someone. We just think we're being ourselves. We might think we're offering the type of advice our spouse really needs to hear right now.

Have you ever accurately predicted what will happen on a cricket pitch before the ball has been bowled? It's an incredible feeling. That moment when you glance at the field, remember who's on strike and think: Here comes the short ball, only for it to arrive, be pulled and then safely pouched by the fielder you had mentally circled at deep square. For a split second you feel omniscient. Like you've cracked the code.

Recently, we saw Art, a play whose premise centers on three sophisticated, middle-aged friends who descend hell-ward in a bitter fight that tears the otherwise resilient fabric of their friendship. The trio's scorching verbal combat ignites when one of them acquires a "work of art" consisting of a contentless, blank-white canvas, which he purchased for the profligate sum of 300,000 dollars!

Instead, it evolved as something closer to a social instrument panel that offers a constant readout of where we stand with others and whether our place in the group feels secure. One influential account, sociometer theory (e.g. Leary et al., 1995), argues that self-esteem tracks perceived acceptance and rejection, quietly nudging us to protect our belonging. From an evolutionary standpoint, that makes sense given how for most of human history, being excluded was an existential threat.

Mickey Mouse is more than a simple animated character. He represents a particular emotion that most people experience before they have a chance to process what they've seen. From Mickey Mouse's two black dots for his ears, his round-shaped head, his big doe-like eyes, and his expressionless smile, it is clear that one can understand Mickey Mouse without being told anything about him.

Some people just come off as more trustworthy than others. It's hard to put it into words, but with certain people, you might find yourself spilling your guts upon first meeting, feeling a sense of safety and comfort that puts you at ease and lets you relax. Others might put you on guard in a visceral way-you don't know exactly what it is, but something about them makes your nervous system vigilant, and you start to second-guess what you tell them or how close you let them get.

"Coercive control" is the term for a diabolical relationship pattern that can have devastating consequences. It occurs when one person unreasonably interferes with another person's free will and liberty (Pisarra, 2022). The seriousness of coercive control is being increasingly acknowledged, and in some places, it is now a criminal offence. As heinous as coercive control is, the dynamics of controlling may be key to understanding what is occurring.

Most organizations still hire for culture fit-even those that loudly champion diversity and inclusion. The phrase sounds benign, even wise: who wouldn't want colleagues who "fit in"? But behind this feel-good notion lies one of the biggest obstacles to innovation and progress in modern workplaces. Culture fit has become a euphemism for cultural cloning: selecting people who already look, think, and behave like the incumbents.

While it may seem like setting a weight-related goal is just the kickstart you need, consider how doing so may actually destroy your motivation in the long run. Motivation is a finicky beast. It's often fleeting-here today, gone tomorrow. Motivation researchers found that there are different types of motivation, which sit on a spectrum with extrinsic motivation at one end and intrinsic motivation at the other.

I say: "My son hasn't spoken to me for a long time." The response I get is: "It is what it is." I say: "I'm anxious about my blood test results." The response I get is: "It is what it is." I say: "Some part of me regrets never having had children." The response I get is: "It is what it is."

We Generation X people are made of stern stuff. The latchkey generation; the ones raised on convenience foods that probably bordered on the radioactive; the kids sent out at daybreak and told to return only when the street lights came on.

But the relationship between intelligence and happiness is complicated, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2023. "The gifts you possess can lift you up or pull you down; it all depends on how you use them," he explained. Today's newsletter explores how to utilize your skills and smarts to add joy to your life, rather than letting them chip away at what actually makes the days meaningful.

If you're someone who rejoices at self-serve checkouts, automated banking, or online shopping-and I'll admit, I tick two out of three of these boxes-have you ever stopped to think about how taxing these shifts might be on the incidental social interactions we have with others? Recently, while reading Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection-And Why We All Need More, I realised just how much these incidental social opportunities are diminishing.

Switching off negativity may take a process that involves neuroplasticity. According to Puderbaugh and Emmady ( Journal of Behavioral Science, 2023), "Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or brain plasticity, is a process that involves adaptive structural and functional changes to the brain." Simply put, it is "the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections."

Did someone with spatial-sequence synaesthesia design the calendar app on mobile phones? Because that's how time and dates look in my brain. If you say a date to me, that day appears in a grid diagram in my head, and it shows if that box is already imprinted with a holiday, event or someone's birthday. Public holidays and special events like Christmas and Easter are already imprinted for the year, and the diagram goes backwards to about 100,000BC

When I was a product marketing leader for a corporate regional bank, I found myself getting annoyed during an all-day strategy meeting. My frustration came from hearing the same voices, sharing the same old ideas. I wondered why other people, especially the women in the room, weren't speaking up. I remember thinking, "Well, you could be the one to speak up."

Artificial intelligence can lower the barrier to self-reflection and be genuinely empowering for some, she explains. For people who feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure of where to begin, prompts can act as a scaffold for expressing and understanding your ideas, says Iftikhar. If the AI has access to information you've either shared or asked it to generate, it's also an efficient tool at synthesizing that information, explains Ziang Xiao, an assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University.