What It’s Like to Be…a Welder
Pushing perfectionism to its limits, suffering third degree burns from slag, and having your welds “shot” by X-rays with Matt “Lucky” Reed, a welder in Florida.
January 16th, 2024
music
January 11th, 2024
What It’s Like to Be…a Piano Teacher
Delivering the perfect first lesson, working with 89-year-old students, and learning how to charge for your work with Christina Whitlock, a piano teacher in Indiana.
November 22nd, 2023
Why Randomness Doesn’t Feel Random
Most of us tend to think of randomness as being “well spaced.” Genuinely random distributions seem to contradict our inherent ideas of what randomness should look like.
February 13th, 2023
How Winning (or Losing) a Grammy Changes the Music Artists Make
Recent research shows how winning a Grammy can spark innovation, but losing one can snuff it out.
September 19th, 2022
Research Lead: Grammy Awards Change Artists, A Bias Toward Decisiveness, Think Like an Anthropologist, and More
The Research Lead is a monthly digest connecting you to noteworthy academic and applied research from around the behavioral sciences. Here are our picks for September 2022.
September 06th, 2021
“Turn Down for What”—The Invisible Toll of Music That’s Too Loud
Most of us don’t know how loud is too loud, and it’s hurting our health.
December 03rd, 2019
Pursuing the Psychological Building Blocks of Music
Humans are wired to produce and understand music, suggest researchers in an ambitious new study. Despite the evidence, not everyone is likely to be convinced.
April 03rd, 2018
The Key to Creating Cost-Effective Experiments at Scale
How can we build large-scale, cost-effective experiments that people want to participate in?
June 14th, 2016
People Favor Naturals Over Strivers—Even Though They Say Otherwise
Our society is deeply conflicted about the source of excellence. On one hand, we are fascinated with child prodigies. On the other hand, we love a good “overcoming adversity” story.
March 10th, 2014
Lucy in the Mind of Lennon: An Empirical Analysis of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
In his recent book, Lucy in the Mind of Lennon, Psychologist Tim Kasser utilizes the methods of psychological science to explore John Lennon’s life through one of Lennon’s most famous and controversial songs: Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
