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The One Person Problem: Why We Blame Villains and Wait for Heroes Instead of Fixing Systems

Beyond Blame and Savior: Why Systems, Not Individuals, Drive Outcomes When something goes wrong, we look for the person who caused it. When we want something fixed, we l

Wired for War: The Psychology of Leaders Who Choose Conflict

War, Power, and the Psychology of Leaders: Dark Traits, Moral Disengagement, and AI-Driven Distance Dr. Leslie Poston argues that war is a predictable failure of leaders

Fear, Politics, and Getting the Science Right: Terror Management Theory Revisited

Terror Management Theory, Replication, and How Science Updates What We Think We Know Dr. Leslie Poston discusses Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a framework for unders

The Personality Test Industrial Complex: The MBTI Problem

Why MBTI Took Over Corporate Culture Despite Weak Science, and What to Use Instead Dr. Leslie Poston traces how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator became a multi-million-do

Why You're Stuck: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Why Some People Bounce Back: Narrative Identity, Redemption Stories, and Getting Unstuck PARTICIPATE IN MY POST DOC RESEARCH! CLICK HERE. Dr. Leslie Poston explains tha

Specimen in a Petri Dish Part Two: Body Control as Political Power

Body Policing as Authoritarian Power: From Fascist Propaganda to TikTok Pipelines In Part One, we asked who gets to decide what a woman's body should look like. In Part

Specimen in a Petri Dish: The Psychology of Public Body Policing

Why Society Feels Entitled to Comment on Women’s Bodies, and the Harm It Causes Jenna Ortega sat down to talk about her career. Within a day, the internet was only talki

Be Cringe, Be Free: The Psychology of Refusing to Perform

Be Cringe, Be Free: Authenticity, Shame, and the Cost of Performing the Self "Be cringe, be free" sounds like a joke about dancing badly in public. Dr. Leslie Poston mak

Gotcha Culture: Why Catching an AI Cheater Feels So Good

The Psychology Behind AI Call-Outs and False Certainty Dr. Leslie Poston examines why people react with such gleeful certainty when an AI detector flags someone's writin

Coded to Exhaustion: The Hidden Cost of Outsmarting the Algorithm

Algospeak and the Cost of Speaking Under Algorithmic Suppression When millions of creators have to say 'unalive' instead of suicide and use a grape emoji instead of talk

What We Lose When Knowledge Has to Pay Rent

Education’s Value Beyond Jobs: Critical Thinking, Humanities, and the Real Jobs Crisis Host Dr. Leslie Poston argues that education’s value is not defined by whether it

Love Languages Were Never Scientific

Why Love Languages Went Viral Without the Science to Support Them Millions of people can name their love language. Almost none of them know the man who invented the conc

Why We Keep Falling For Moral Panics

Moral Panics as Effort Shields: Why Outrage Replaces Action Why do we grab onto moral panics so eagerly, and then quietly drop them the moment they stop being convenient

Why We Reject New Evidence That Could Directly Help Us: The Semmelweis Effect

The Semmelweis Effect, COVID Cognitive Decline, and Why Evidence Struggles to Spread Host Leslie Poston explains the Semmelweis effect (reflexively rejecting strong evid

The Age of Uncertainty: What Workplace Instablity is Doing to Your Brain

Sustained Uncertainty at Work: Why It Hurts Your Brain and What Helps Host Leslie Poston discusses sustained workplace uncertainty and its psychological effects, citing

Sounds Deep, Says Nothing: The Science of Bullshit Receptivity

Bullshit Receptivity: Why We Trust the Wrong Words Host Leslie Poston discusses “bullshit receptivity,” a peer-reviewed construct describing susceptibility to impressive

The Credibility Trap: Why We Trust Confident Wrongness

The Credibility Trap: Why Confidence Beats Correctness Host Leslie Poston is back after a hiatus to move PsyberSpace to a new weekly Thursday schedule and explains why p

Propaganda: Nobody's Immune

How Propaganda Uses Your Values Against Your Brain: The Passport Revocation Example Host Leslie Poston explains that no one is immune to propaganda, using her own initia

Moral Licensing: How Doing Good Gives People Permission to Be Worse

Moral Licensing: Why Doing Good Can Make Us Behave Worse Host Leslie Poston explains the phenomenon of moral licensing: after people do something that affirms their iden

The Death of Serendipity: What Algorithmic Personalization Is Doing to Your Mind

The Cost of Losing Serendipity in Algorithmic Discovery Host Leslie Poston discusses how algorithmic recommendation systems have replaced everyday accidental discovery,