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Anjan Chatterjee | TED Speaker
Anjan Chatterjee seeks to answer a tantalizing question: Why is beauty so gripping?
Cognitive neuroscientist
Hector Garcia | TED Speaker
Hector A. Garcia has spent his career as a frontline psychologist delivering evidence-based psychotherapies to veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Psychologist
Keely Muscatell: The science behind how sickness shapes your mood
Your immune system is more socially aware than you think, says social neuroscientist and psychology professor Keely Muscatell. Investigating the interconnectedness of your mood and your inflammatory system, she offers an evolutionary reason as to why being sick may make you feel depressed — and vice versa.
Sarah Brosnan | TED Speaker
Sarah Brosnan studies how and why animals make decisions.
Primatologist
George Monbiot: The new political story that could change everything
To get out of the mess we're in, we need a new story that explains the present and guides the future, says author George Monbiot. Drawing on findings from psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, he offers a new vision for society built around our fundamental capacity for altruism and cooperation. This contagiously optimistic talk will...
Paul Bloom | TED Speaker
Paul Bloom explores some of the most puzzling aspects of human nature, including pleasure, religion and morality.
Psychologist
Robin Hanson | TED Speaker
Does humanity have a future as uploaded minds? In his work, Robin Hanson asks this and other extra-large questions.
Futurist, social scientist
Ryan Martin: Why some anger can be good for you
Anger researcher Ryan Martin draws from a career studying what makes people mad to explain some of the cognitive processes behind anger and why a healthy dose of it is, in fact, useful. "Your anger exists in you because it offered your ancestors an evolutionary advantage," he says. "It's a powerful and healthy force in your life."
Robin Kramer | TED Speaker
Robin Kramer uses experimental and computational approaches to try to answer questions like: “How do we learn new faces?” and “Are we any good at matching face photographs?”
Experimental psychologist
Ryan Martin: Why we get mad -- and why it's healthy
Anger researcher Ryan Martin draws from a career studying what makes people mad to explain some of the cognitive processes behind anger -- and why a healthy dose of it can actually be useful. "Your anger exists in you ... because it offered your ancestors, both human and nonhuman, an evolutionary advantage," he says. "[It's] a powerful and healt...
Psychology: Understanding Happiness
TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections — supplemented by rich educational materials — for students, educators and self-guided learners. In Understanding Happiness, expert explorers of the mind chart our understanding of how happiness is created and cultivated. Their insights challenge our most basic cultu...
Laurie Santos | TED Speaker
Laurie Santos studies primate psychology and monkeynomics -- testing problems in human psychology on primates, who (not so surprisingly) have many of the same predictable irrationalities we do.
Cognitive psychologist
Emma Bryce: Why do we itch?
The average person experiences dozens of individual itches each day. We've all experienced the annoyance of an inconvenient itch — but have you ever pondered why we itch in the first place? Is there actually an evolutionary purpose to the itch, or is it simply there to annoy us? Emma Bryce digs deep into the skin to find out. [Directed by Sashko...
Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
TED collaborates with animator Andrew Park to illustrate Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty -- that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply "in the eye of the beholder," are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.
Robert Wright: The evolution of compassion
Robert Wright uses evolutionary biology and game theory to explain why we appreciate the Golden Rule ("Do unto others..."), why we sometimes ignore it and why there’s hope that, in the near future, we might all have the compassion to follow it.
David Puts: To find your perfect mate, think like an evolutionist
Matters of the heart sometimes feel impossible to parse. But when examined through the eye of an evolutionist, our romantic whims and sexual desires can start to make more sense, and even seem a bit predictable. Biological anthropologist David Puts confronts how we compete, care and copulate based on evolutionary biology -- and what that means f...
Comment(s) of the week, Jan. 4, 2017: Let's talk about faith
This week's comments were posted on Rabbi Sharon Brous' talk, which has sparked quite the conversation.
The first poster is Paul Watson, who is exactly the type of community member I'd hoped to highlight when we began this project. Paul's comment is thoughtful, speaking from his particular area of interest/expertise, and looking at the larger...
Posted January 4, 2017
10 facts about infidelity
Love isn’t so much an emotion, says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, as it is a brain system, one of three that’s related to mating and reproduction. It’s those other two systems that explain why human beings are capable of infidelity even as we so highly value love. Here Fisher explains more about cheating -- why it occurs, how common it...
Posted January 23, 2014
Alexandra Horowitz: Why all dogs are good dogs
Canine cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz offers a peek inside the mind of your dog, sharing solutions to common "misbehaviors" that are often simply the result of a pup's attempt to communicate in a world that's very different from their own. Hear about the evolution and psychology behind your dog's actions -- and how to give them a happier, h...
Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar
On any given day we're lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lies can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of "Liespotting," shows the manners and "hotspots" used by those trained to recognize deception -- and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving. (Contains mature content)
Sophie Zadeh: Are there universal expressions of emotion?
The 40 or so muscles in the human face can be activated in different combinations to create thousands of expressions. But do these expressions look the same and communicate the same meaning around the world regardless of culture? Is one person's smile another's grimace? Sophie Zadeh investigates. [TED-Ed Animation by Estúdio Bacuri]
The psychology of fiction with Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Transcript)
ReThinking with Adam Grant
The psychology of fiction with Jennifer Lynn Barnes
March 14, 2023
[00:00:00] Adam Grant:
Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts an...
Who Are We?: The speakers in Session 11 of TED2013
The name says it all: this session took a look at everything that human beings do, think and know. From thoughts on what makes a civilization decline to the roots of our morality, these speakers shared some of the stats and stories that point to our collective identity.
Here, the speakers who appeared in this session. Click on their name to r...
Posted March 1, 2013
Lucy Hone: 3 secrets of resilient people
Everyone experiences loss, but how do you cope with the tough moments that follow? Resilience researcher Lucy Hone shares three hard-won strategies for developing the capacity to brave adversity, overcome struggle and face whatever may come head-on with fortitude and grace.
Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?
"Babies and young children are like the R&D division of the human species," says psychologist Alison Gopnik. Her research explores the sophisticated intelligence-gathering and decision-making that babies are really doing when they play.
Stefan C. Dombrowski: The dark history of IQ tests
In 1905, psychologists Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon designed a test for children who were struggling in school in France. Designed to determine which children required individualized attention, their method formed the basis of the modern IQ test. So how do IQ tests work, and are they a true reflection of intelligence? Stefan C. Dombrowski exp...
Can you guess someone's political party based on their name? And other psych quizzes
Can you guess someone's political party based on their name? Can you guess how well someone fights just by looking at his face? In my book, Psy-Q, I explore these and other questions through quizzes, puzzles and experiments that are designed to improve your understanding of both your own psychology and psychology in general. Try these three ques...
Posted April 2, 2015
How empathy gets in the way of a better world with Paul Bloom (Transcript)
The TED Interview
How empathy gets in the way of a better world with Paul Bloom
April 4, 2024
[00:00:00] Chris Anderson:
Hello everyone, this is Chris Anderson. So, in this season of the TED Interview, as I think you know, we're focusing on generosity and especially the many wild and wonderful ways of making it infectious. To make sense of any ...
Introductory essay
Written by the educator who created What Makes Us Human?, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in his field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.
As a biological anthropologist, I never liked drawing sharp distinctions between human and non-human. Such boundaries ma...