Speaking of the nose: the unexpected role of sniffing during conversations
Imagine having a casual conversation and your conversation partner suddenly sniffs… No need to run
Science
science
I spy with my little eye something (dis)similar to what just passed by
You see what you see, right? Well, it’s not that simple. It turns out that
Can a diet cure autism?
In the last decade, autism has changed from a rare phenomenon into a common disorder. However, a lot of dubious information is still going around about autism. It is sometimes thought that autism can be caused by wrong eating patterns, and that a change in diet can undo the symptoms of autism. What does science have to say about it?
A pill to help you study?
Ritalin is prescribed to people diagnosed with ADHD so that they can study better. For this reason, students without ADHD have also begun to use Ritalin. But does such a pill work as well for them as it does for students with ADHD?
How to push your IQ
The level of your intelligence is fixed. You can’t train it as if it’s a muscle—at least that’s what I was taught during my bachelor’s in Psychology. A new meta-analysis is not so sure about this ancient mantra. It shows that even adults can raise their IQ scores…by performing boring tasks endlessly.
The “Light as a feather” mystery solved by science
Lifting an entire person with just your index fingers?! Many have tried this trick with successful results. Though it may seem like magic, there is a scientific explanation for this mystery. Try it out for yourself and read here why it works.
Training Cats is possible, see for yourself
You can train a dog to do sit but training a cat do to the same is impossible. Cats have their own character and do whatever they want. They don’t adhere to anyone, except themselves. But is that true? We will show you that you actually can train cats to do various things and the story that they can’t be trained is an urban myth. Look at the video and see for yourself.
How IQ-scores encourage racism
Intelligence is one of the most studied aspects of human cognition. However, it seems that IQ – the intelligence quotient – does not accurately represent intelligence. In fact, the way IQ is determined encourages racism, and the scientific community is not free from these biases.
This is why “93% of communication is nonverbal” is a myth
Have you ever heard of the claim that 93% of communication is nonverbal? This often-repeated claim states that 55% of what you communicate comes from your facial expressions, 38% from your tone of voice, and the words you speak are only responsible for 7%. Although non-verbal communication is of course important, these numbers are not true at all. What is wrong with them? And where do they come from?
We are more creative than we think
The Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling used to say “I think I think harder, think more than other people do” to explain his remarkable creative performances. And he was probably right: not everyone could have unravelled the mystery of how atoms are arranged and bounded together (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1954). Yet, does it mean that creativity isn’t within everyone’s reach? What is creativity really and how can we master it?