“I knew it would happen!” But did you really? Hindsight bias is the tendency to see past events as more predictable than they really were. Our brains prefer tidy, coherent stories over messy, uncertain realities. My latest column explores hindsight bias, and how it can have significant mental health implications.
In my last article, I explored the habit of dampening – how people downplay or distance themselves from positive experiences, often without realising it. Dampening is an attempt to stay guarded, to play things safe, but it damages well-being and robs us of joyful moments. In this follow-on article, I ask: how do we break this destructive habit?
Savouring life’s joyful moments seems like the natural thing to do, yet many people do the opposite – they downplay, dismiss, or distance themselves from joy. In the first of two columns on this subject, I ask: why do many people dampen positive emotions?
Understanding something is all very well – just don’t mistake it for meaningful change. That’s one of the points made by psychologist and CBT therapist Dr Steven Phillipson in his thought-provoking essay, Choice. My latest column explores what Phillipson has to say, and how sometimes, we collect insights not as a path to change but as a way to justify inaction.
We all have our own emotional style, and feel some emotions more strongly and more routinely than others. My latest columns explores how many of us have one dominant or default emotion – the one we return to most easily.
In my last column, I looked at what it means to develop a victim mentality – a mindset where someone tends to view themselves as being consistently wronged by life or by others, and feels powerless to change their circumstances. In this follow-up column, I look at how to help someone find a way out of the story they’ve become stuck in.
There is a difference between being a victim of something traumatic or tragic, and developing a mindset shaped by a more general sense of victimhood. My latest Southern Star column explores what it means to talk about a victim mentality.
Should parents teach kids that the world is a bad place? It seems that many do. In a survey, parents were asked what kind of world beliefs they thought were best for their children. A substantial number believed in teaching their kids that the world is, in many ways, a bad place: unfair, dangerous, and getting worse. My latest column looks at research showing that's not a good idea.
We often think of smiling as a reflection of happiness, but what if the act of smiling itself has the power to shape how we feel? My latest Southern Star column looks at the latest global research into the so-called facial feedback hypothesis.
Most of us can look back at who we were 10 or 20 years ago and recognise how much we’ve changed. But here’s a question for you – do you think you will continue to change, or will you be much the same person in 10 or 20 years’ time? Most of us seem to assume that who we are today is who we’ll be for the rest of our lives, but the research is clear on this point - we're going to change more than we think.