Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary | Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward | University of California Press | 184 pages | $24.95 (Paperback) I’m willing to bet you own at least one pair of jeans. Denim clothing—which will be used interchangeably with jeans for this discussion—is popular with people just about everywhere, with the [...]

To mark Valentine’s Day, I’m posting an early piece that originally appeared on the old home of Anthropology in Practice. Hope your connections are everything you hope for today. A lingering look. A coy smile. Standing just a bit too close. An accidental brush. Flirtation is an art. It is also a deftly employed social [...]

Have you Liked anything today? A year ago, I wrote about the psychology behind Liking, noting that Liking a status update on Facebook could help reinforce relationships and Liking articles and media on the web could help build online reputations Liking shows that we’re paying attention, and allows us to be recognized as a participant [...]

What are people going to think? Has it ever crossed your mind? The question, I mean. In a moment of panic or a moment of regret or desperation? Have you ever said those words with a sense of anguish or in a moment of anger? What will people think if your actions fall outside the [...]

Tweeting, texting, Facebooking, checking email, sending photos, and even, yes, old-fashioned telephone calls—we’re doing it all, and we’re doing it wherever and whenever we please. Mobile technology has increased our ability to connect to each other, but we’re still working out the social codes that go along with this medium. As we weave our digital [...]

This week from my ResearchBlogging.org column: Contextual clues are important in archaeology. And at Bones Don’t Lie, Katy Meyers highlights how a geoarchaeology approach can reveal how a tomb was treated—whether it was reopened and how many times. With time, this information may be linked to other tomb elements that can possibly shed more light on funerary [...]

It took a few days of moping around the house before I finally acknowledged what the problem is: my heart hurts. It’s an expression I use with those closest to me. It means I’m sad, and to some degree I feel helpless. It means my heart is breaking just a little. And it’s also an [...]

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard that Facebook allows people to share their organ donor status. A friend of mine adjusted her information on the day of the announcement to reflect her donor status and someone quipped, “What did you donate?” Snark potential aside, it’s a wonderful way to bring the donor community together and to [...]

It’s a curious saying: “Cold hands, warm heart.” It proposes that people whose hands are usually cold actually have kind and loving personalities. There is no counterpart as far as I can tell. That is, people with warm hands aren’t reputed to have cold hearts. They’re just regular folk whose body temperatures hover at the [...]

“Go ahead,” he said. “I know in a little bit you’re going to go post some smart ass comment on Facebook.” He could not keep the scorn from his voice. “And everyone will sympathize with you. And I’ll look like the bad guy.” Her jaw tightened. “I have never called you out on Facebook,” she [...]

Imagine that you’re an infant monkey, and you’ve just been thrown into a cage after several hours in isolation. You’ve been deprived of food, so you’re starving. Facing you are two adult-looking (fake) monkeys, designed to look like each one could potentially be your mother. On the left is a “wire mother,” equipped with a [...]

Two decades ago, a team of researchers led by psychologist John Gottman set out to determine one thing: Why do couples get divorced? Gottman decided to answer this question by trying something very simple: Recording married couples talking for 15 minutes about a recent conflict that they were having in their relationship, and then carefully [...]

Editor’s note: The below is a response to a critique of MindUP, a social and emotional learning program pioneered by actor Goldie Hawn. I have covered this program in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit “Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control”). I hope this [...]

I am happy to be breaking my silence of recent weeks with a preview of the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind. As the summer begins its slow resignation and people anticipate the start of school, our pages revive the ongoing societal debate about the best way to teach our kids. This issue of Mind [...]

Part 5 of a 5-part series By Allen Frances* When the third edition of psychiatry’s manual of mental illness, the DSM-III, was published 30 years ago, there was great optimism it would soon be the willing victim of its own success, achieving a kind of planned obsolescence. Surely, the combining of a reasonably reliable system [...]

Guest Blog by Leonard Mlodinow* One advantage of belonging to a cohesive society in which people help each other is that the group is often better equipped than a set of individuals to deal with threats from the outside. People intuitively realize there is strength in numbers, and take comfort in the company of others, [...]

People V. The State of Illusion, a new docudrama from Samuel Goldwyn Films, is a mixture of fiction and brain science that, despite these awkward bedfellows, was compelling enough to keep me up late on a Friday night. Although most of the well-worn findings parroted by the movie’s parade of experts were not new to [...]

As an editor at Scientific American Mind, I get a sneak peak at a menu of surprises about us—people, that is—that each issue has to offer. As the March/April Mind makes its debut, I wanted to share my favorite brain food from its cognitive kitchen. Here are three not-to-miss messages from its pages. Later this [...]

People who succeed in their jobs and in life are typically blessed with a special blend of four qualities: efficacy (self-confidence), resilience, hope and optimism. This mental confection, which scientists call psychological capital, reflects our capacity to overcome obstacles and push ourselves to pursue our ambitions. Not surprisingly, having lots of it is linked to [...]

Sellers have long charged a premium for objects that confer some kind of social status, even if they offer few, if any, functional benefits over cheaper products. Designer sunglasses, $200,000 Swiss watches, and many high-end cars often seem to fall into this category. If a marketer can make a mundane item seem like a status [...]

People have long tried tricks to aid their memories. One of the most useful of these so-called mnemonic devices, I’ve found, involves associating names with word pictures or with other people you know well. I was just at a party, for example, and met a man who shared a last name with someone I’ve known [...]

People are particular about their things. Property—who owns it or did what with it—is the subject of many a legal battle. It’s odd to me how attached people get to objects and how emotional they become when someone messes with their stuff. Yet we take notions about sharing and rules such as “don’t take what [...]