A research psychologist's curious look at human behavior
Not every gay man has a female best friend, nor does every straight woman have a gay man as her most trusted confidant. But according to a recent article in Evolutionary Psychology, every one should...
It should come as no surprise that an archival search of the U.S. Patent Office yields an embarrassment of riches regarding various contraptions for guarding against self-abuse (masturbation) and nocturnal seminal emissions (wet dreams) in human males...
If youre desperate for a child but have been having trouble in this area, semen may be the solution to your reproductive woes. That may sound like the most obvious sentence ever written in the history of the English language, but sometimes beneath the most ancient truisms lie remarkable secrets...
If you’re anything like me, with eyes that roll over to the back of your head whenever you hear words like “reincarnation” or “parapsychology,” if you suffer great paroxysms of despair for human intelligence whenever you catch a glimpse of that dandelion-colored cover of Heaven Is For Real or other such books, and become angry when [...]..
Most of us are convinced that we excel at being clearheaded, humane thinkers when it comes to sex. We appeal, and admirably so, to notions such as harm and consent.
In working on my latest book Perv, some of the saddest material I came across involved the stormy cross-cultural conflicts erupting between Western ideals of sex and those discovered among other “exotic” societies...
The recent headlining report of a 70-year-old man who inserted a fork into his urethra in a misplaced effort to obtain sexual gratification—and who, in the process, unleashed a collective wince heard ’round the world once the x-ray image of his sounding went viral online—shines a light on the lengths some people will go to [...]..
For most of us, the prospect of getting injured in a car accident isn’t particularly erotic. But of course, that’s just most of us. When it comes to human sexuality, anything—and I really do mean anything—can become subjectively eroticized in a rogue mind...
Suum cuique pulchrum est—“to each his own is beautiful.” For an otherwise normal, 23-year-old male patient described by the Wisconsin psychiatrist Austin McSweeny in 1972, the most arousing sexual fantasy was the image of an obese woman nibbling at her nails...
Using condoms is a good thing. Using used condoms, well, not so much. In a 2009 article published in Sexually Transmitted Infections, the British medical author Vincent Tremayne explains the fetish for prophylatics...
STAFFBehind the scenes at Scientific American
Read
STAFF
Read
Exploring the human condition.
Read
Insights into intelligence, creativity, personality, and well-being
Read
Everything you always wanted to know about raising science-literate kids
Read
Critical views of science in the news
Read
STAFF
Read
Explore the science behind the dog in your bed
Read
News and research about endangered species from around the world
Read
The Science Behind Extreme Weather
Read
Science by and for kids ages 8-15
Read
Commentary invited by editors of Scientific American
Read
Climate science in a changing world
Read
Illusions, Delusions, and Everyday Deceptions
Read
Discussion and news about planets, exoplanets, and astrobiology
Read
Opinion, arguments & analyses from guest experts and from the editors of Scientific American
Read
Mathematics: learning it, doing it, celebrating it.
Read
Adventures in the good science of rock-breaking.
Read
STAFFIllustrating science since 1845
Read
STAFFA science blog, sans blague
Read
A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
Read
Exploring and celebrating diversity in science.
Read
Already a subscriber? Sign in.