Narcissism is one of those epithets nobody wants to earn — it's a character trait highly associated with vanity and egoism, brandished by the people we tell ourselves we would never think to consider as friends. But what does the observer know about the experiment they're in? It turns out narcissists are able to charm the socks off of anyone they meet — if they feel like it — but not more than that. Stick around for an overview of »

What we know as human society is held together by interpersonal relationships – on one hand, it's the give-and-take equilibria between persons or social groups and the expectations of reciprocally beneficial behavior, and on the other, the feelings of closeness, trust, and personalistic self-disclosure. The study I'm about to present to you is something you have probably already seen floating around the internet, said to hold the key to forming close personal relationships in a few dozen carefully designed discussion »

The debate on the business of citation accumulation in scientific publishing is long and deep-rooted, but the science of citation accumulation – not so much. In this little post, I'm summarizing some of the interesting research done on the effect that titles have on the number of citations a scientific piece of text receives. This might be a good place to start the next time you're sending off your literary work of art into the world. Title type An analysis »

Here we go again, it's that time of the year for the northern hemisphere - summer. Eternal sunshine. Blistering heat and daily temperatures reaching the heights needed to melt thoughts. Good news? It's done in a few months, and then we can all complain about the cold and rain again. Bad news? It's not just the weather that's being horrible — it's everyone around you, too. A recent paper, Exploring the impact of ambient temperature on helping (Belkin & Kouchaki, »

I've heard you need clickbait titles to catch the interest of internet strangers, and this one is right on the money. So hello there, let me tell you about how country music is going to kill you. There's a short and sweet paper from the early nineties that has played with the problematic of the link between country music and suicide rates (The Effect of Country Music on Suicide by S. Stack and J. Gundlach; 1992), and it tells you »