“I think the misunderstanding — or, at least, one of them — is that it’s only the perseverance part that matters. But I think that the passion piece is at least as important. I mean, if you are really, really tenacious and dogged about a goal that’s not meaningful to you, and not interesting to […]
Blog
Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Imposter Syndrome?
“Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things. On my second or third night […]
STUDY ALERT: Clinical Correlates of Vulnerable and Grandiose Narcissism: A Personality Perspective
Clinical Correlates of Vulnerable and Grandiose Narcissism: A Personality Perspective Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, Brandon Weiss, MA, Joshua D. Miller, PhD, and W. Keith Campbell, PhD There is broad consensus that there are at least two different dimensions of narcissism: vulnerable and grandiose. In this study, the authors use a new trifurcated, three-factor model of […]
Why is it that those who most vigorously defend the importance of IQ are those who emphasize the biological basis of IQ?
I’ve been wondering something, and I’d love to genuinely hear some perspectives on this matter. It seems as though the ones who most vigorously defend the importance of IQ (outside the educational psychology realm) are those who study the genetic and biological foundations of IQ. But why is this the case? Certainly it’s possible to […]
IQ and Society
On December 13, 1994, a group of fifty-two experts in the scientific study of intelligence and allied fields provided the following unified definition of intelligence in the Wall Street Journal: Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn […]
Beautiful Minds: The Next Generation
For the past decade, I’ve had the privilege of writing the Beautiful Minds blog, starting with Psychology Today in 2008 and moving the blog over to Scientific Americanin 2013. The blog has given me the opportunity to write about a wide range of topics that fascinate me– including intelligence, creativity, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, narcissism, introversion, […]
Trigger warnings are least likely to help those who value them the most
A new paper by Izzy Gainsburg and Allison Earl at the University of Michican dives deeper into the trigger warning phenomenon increasingly prevalent on college campuses (see the new book The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt). The researchers define trigger warnings as “statements that warn of a negative emotional response […]
The “Heritability of Intelligence” Probably Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means
In recent years, the field of behavioral genetics has made some important strides in unearthing some of the thousands of genes that are likely associated with IQ. While the association of any particular gene with IQ is minuscule, the more we discover their combined influence on the development of brain networks that support cognition (such […]
The Dark Core of Personality
Over 100 years ago, Charles Spearman made two monumental discoveries about human intelligence. First, a general factor of intelligence (g) exists: people who score high on one test of intelligence also tend to score high on other tests of intelligence. Second, Spearman found that the g-factor conforms to the principle of the “indifference of the […]
STUDY ALERT: Are bigger brains smarter? Evidence from a large-scale pre-registered study
A positive relationship between brain volume and intelligence has been suspected since the 19th century and empirical studies seem to support this hypothesis. However, this claim is not uncontroversial because of concerns about publication bias and the lack of systematic control for critical confounding factors (e.g., height, population structure). We performed a pre-registered study of […]
STUDY ALERT: The development of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S)
The development of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S): A multifactorial measure for a complex emotion David B. Yaden, Scott Barry Kaufman, Elizabeth Hyde, Alice Chirico, Andrea Gaggioli, Jia Wei Zhang, Dacher Keltner Abstract Awe is a complex emotion composed of an appraisal of vastness and a need for accommodation. The purpose of this study was […]
Why Quieting the Ego Strengthens Your Best Self
We live in some times. On the one hand, things are better than they’ve ever been. Overall rates of violence, poverty, and disease are down. There have been substantial increases in education, longevity, leisure time, and safety. On the other hand… We are more divided than ever as a species. Tribalism and identity politics are […]