Imagine going to a corporate team-building event where everyone in your office was sorted and evaluated based on the results of taking one of those time-wasting Buzzfeed quizzes, like “Which Disney Character Would You Be Friends With?” or “Which Muppet Are You?” It might make for an interesting afternoon, or at least a weird story to tell the next time you’re at a party, but it probably wouldn’t leave you feeling like you had gained some crucial self-insight to help you funct

Just how much is your performance shaped by the way your boss talks to you? To what extent are our behaviors, attitudes, and identities simply a reflection of somebody else’s expectations? This been the subject of controversy since at least 1968, when Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jackson published their book Pygmalion in the Classroom. In it, Rosenthal and Jackson described studies in which first and second grade teachers seemed to treat students differently based on how smart

Making iffy predictions about our future: it’s been a hallmark of human behavior for at least as long as we’ve been recording our present. Perhaps the most famous early example of forecasting took place in Mount Parnassus in Delphi, Greece. From roughly the 8th century BCE to the 4th century BCE, for nine days each year, travelers could pay to pose their burning questions to the Pythia, a priestess said to channel the wisdom of Apollo. To a modern reader, perhaps a bit skepti

"What is the most resilient parasite?” asks Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2011 movie Inception. “Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?” Before anyone can ask what exactly he’s getting at—or volunteer some gruesome facts about, say, toxoplasmosis —DiCaprio answers his own question. “An idea,” he declares, with a meaningful squint. “Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate.” Metaphors aside, Leo’s got a point. We