Do you ever get that nagging feeling of discomfort when your beliefs and actions don't quite line up? Like when you swear you ...

Do you ever feel a nagging sense of discomfort when your actions don't match your beliefs? For example, you might tell a small white lie even though you value honesty. That uneasy feeling is known as ...

Elicitation is a technique to obtain sensitive information without asking direct questions. Direct questions trigger defensive responses to protect information people would prefer to remain unsaid.

Cognitive dissonance is what happens when a person holds two sets of beliefs at odds with each other. The human brain doesn’t like logical inconsistencies, so someone experiencing cognitive dissonance ...

Jocelyn Solis-Moreira is a New York-based science journalist whose work has appeared in Health, Live Science, and Discover Magazine, among other publications. She holds a master's degree in psychology ...

Have you ever been out and about, perhaps tackling the Christmas shopping list, and felt a bit thirsty? You buy a drink—say, one that comes in a plastic bottle—and quench your thirst, only to find ...

When “Barbie,” the movie, was released, I was convinced that I did not need to watch a film about dolls. It wasn’t until a colleague said that the film tackled the complexity of cognitive dissonance ...

In 1934, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit eastern India, killing thousands and devastating several cities. Curiously, in areas that were spared the worst destruction, stories soon spread that an even ...