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Thinking about Schizophrenia: Evolutionary Explanations
How can debilitating mental illnesses like schizophrenia survive when evolution favors survival of the fittest? Evolutionary psychologists explore ways in which psychosis or psychosis-risk may have been advantageous for our ancestors.
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Love Me Tinder: A Psychological Perspective on Swiping
Several months ago, I wrote a post about how online dating has shifted the way people search for and establish romantic relationships in the modern era. Notably absent from that article was any mention of what has become the fastest growing, and arguably the most popular, dating app of the past several years: Tinder. Why…
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Is the way to a woman’s heart through her funny bone?
Say what you will about the findings in evolutionary psychology—they certainly have good narratives. One of the latest, published in the July issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, uses sexual selection theory to argue that humor is important to men and women in heterosexual romantic contexts, albeit in different ways.
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Red scare, quite literally
The color red is commonly used to caution us. Used prominently in alerts ranging from stop signs to warning labels, we generally associate red with some kind of threat or danger. Some have even suggested that athletes whose team color is red dominate more than those with other team colors (although having been a Stanford…
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Ovulation Studies Under Attack?
A recent article published by the online magazine Slate.com criticized “ovulation studies,” or psychological research that examines how females’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior change when they are at the most fertile point in their menstrual cycle. The article claims to point out “the many weaknesses of ovulation studies,” but centers around one recent study that…