“We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.” —Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist Emotional intelligence is the ability to accurately perceive your own and others’ emotions, to understand the signals that emotions send about relationships, and to manage your own and others’ emotions. It consists of the following traits: Self-awareness Self-regulation Motivation (defined… Read More

Whether we do so consciously or not, we all form expectations about certain things in our lives, from how much we think we’ll enjoy a particular experience to the expectations we form about ourselves and others. Sometimes these expectations are based on prior experience, but more often than not, they’re based on what we’ve been… Read More

You’ve likely heard of the book—and the new Netflix series—featuring Marie Kondo. What we want to know is, how does tidying up your life affect your brain? If you’re tuned into the self-optimization literature, chances are you’re familiar with Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. One common refrain that’s spreading through home… Read More

Researchers at the University of San Diego have found that the language you speak may determine the quality of your working memory. Running memory tests on participants in eight different cultures around the world, they found a difference in working memory capacity among speakers of various languages. The difference stemmed from the syntax of a… Read More

Digital technology has enriched our lives in countless ways, and both teachers and students now rely on it for everything from conducting research to collaborating with peers. Tech has also become a big part of our downtime, and this has blurred the line somewhat between work and play. For example, for most of us, it’s… Read More

We love personality tests because, as Arwa Mahdawi recently put it in an article for The Guardian, “they make us feel normal and special at the same time.” But what do they actually tell us? Which ones, if any, are known to be reliable? Is it possible to do more harm than good by taking… Read More