I write about psychology, research communication, and the absolute state of academia
Choose your own adventure, then scroll down to see posts in that area.
Why some of us are bad at maths
Why are some of us good at maths and some of us bad at maths?
Why are people superstitious?
An 🦇extremely spooky🦇 Hallowe’en blog, featuring lucky charms, pigeons behaving weirdly, and bananas conspiring against fishers.
The IKEA effect: why do we like possessions we had a hand in making?
Ever wondered why you’re so fond of the wonky bookcase you put together yourself? Come find out!
Why we get left and right confused
How do we develop our sense of left and right? How it can go wrong? And why can sudden left-right confusion tell us that someone is having a stroke?
Why we sigh
Is sighing about feelings, thoughts, or maybe both at once?
Why people collect celebrity memorabilia
How much would you pay for a half-eaten slice of Vegemite toast?
Why it's so difficult to describe smells
I thought it was about brain structure, but it’s actually about language!
Why we copy others’ way of speaking
Ever wonder why you sound different depending on who you’re talking to? Come find out!
Why repeating a word makes it go weird
Hello, is it meaning you’re looking for? Well, you won’t find it if you keep repeating the same word.
Why we sometimes see ourselves from outside in memories
Sometimes we see memories as though we’re observing them from outside our own bodies. Ever wonder why this happens? Psychology has the answer!
Why do out of body experiences happen?
Find out what’s happening in the brain when you have an out of body experience, and how to trick yourself into having one!
What makes a word funny?
What makes gurgle, tit and bassoon such funny words? Psychology has the answer!
What is humour for?
A response to incongruity, to help regulate emotion, to live a fulfilling life… or all of the above?
How the weather affects our moods
Decreasing daylight can trigger seasonal affective disorder, but what about subtler changes in mood?
How false memories happen
It's probably not that we've glitched into an alternate reality, just that we're not very good at remembering…
Why we have food preferences
You like potato and I like potahto, so let's do some science and find out why.
Why we see faces in inanimate objects
It’s called pareidolia and it’s amazing! But why do our brains do it?
Why time speeds up as we get older
Summer seemed to last forever when we were young but is now only five minutes long. What gives?
Why we believe in ghosts
Maybe they’re real; maybe it’s just magnets.
Why do we get déjà vu?
Déjà vu expert Courtney Aitken explains why it sometimes feels like time has gone in circles.