The Psychology of People

The Psychology of People · podslice.co

Self-aware individuals fascinated by why people think, feel, and behave the way they do — listeners who appreciate research-backed insights over pop psychology platitudes.This episode was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, including script research, narration, and visual production. All images and illustrations are generated using artificial intelligence for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to represent actual persons, living or dead, or real situations.

71 episodes

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Episodes 71

Your Big Decisions Aren’t the Problem
1mo ago · 11:02
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
What If Dog Psychology Has Been Asking the Wrong Dogs?
1mo ago · 11:56
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
Why Galleries Feel Like a Workout for Your Nervous System
1mo ago · 11:15
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Loss That Was Almost a Win: Why Near-Misses Change the Story We Tell
1mo ago · 11:44
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Boundary That Became a Wall: How Therapy-Speak Changed Everyday Conflict
1mo ago · 10:50
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Screenshot You Cannot Delete: Digital Hoarding and the Fear of Losing a Version of Yourself
1mo ago · 10:48
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Moment the Crowd Becomes One Body: Why Live Music Feels Bigger Than Music
2mo ago · 11:12
Why does a crowd singing one lyric sometimes feel bigger than music? This episode explores collective effervescence: the strange, measurable sense of shared aliveness that can emerge at concerts, rituals, sports crowds, worship, and festivals. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Hand on Your Shoulder: Touch as a Hidden Regulator of Emotion
2mo ago · 10:31
Why can a hand on your shoulder change your breathing before anyone says the right words? This episode explores interpersonal touch as a hidden regulator of emotion: a channel for stress reduction, safety signaling, and social connection. We look at research on pain, anxiety, depression, cortisol, newborn growth, and the complicated role of consent and context. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Anxiety That Wants an Assignment: Climate Distress and the Need for Agency
2mo ago · 10:17
Climate anxiety is often treated like a feeling we should reduce. But what if some of that distress is not a malfunction, but a signal looking for somewhere to go? This episode explores newer research on young people, climate distress, hope, eco-anxiety, and agency. We look at why reducing anxiety is not always the same as increasing capability, and why collective action may matter psychologically. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Outfit That Thinks With You: What Clothes Really Do to the Mind
2mo ago · 10:27
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Red Light No One Is Watching: Why We Obey Rules That Cost Us
2mo ago · 10:48
You are alone at an empty crosswalk. No cars. No police. No one to judge you. And still, you wait. This episode explores why people follow arbitrary rules even when breaking them would help them, harm no one, and remain anonymous. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Mind Without a Narrator: What Happens When You Don’t Have an Inner Voice
2mo ago · 10:54
Do you silently rehearse sentences before speaking, or does thought arrive without words? This episode explores anendophasia, the reported absence of inner speech, and why recent research suggests the effects are specific rather than global. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Confession Nobody Understands: Why Innocent People Say They Did It
2mo ago · 12:01
Most of us believe we would never confess to something we did not do. That confidence feels obvious, even moral. But research on interrogation pressure suggests the mind behaves differently in custody than it does from the safety of a couch. This episode explores false confessions through the 2024 Campbell systematic review and Kassin and colleagues' 2025 update on police-induced confessions. We look at accusatorial interrogation, information-gathering interviews, false evidence, minimization, fatigue, isolation, and the short-term need to escape an unbearable room. This episode was generated
The Room Everyone Misreads: Why Groups Stay Silent About What Most People Actually Think
2mo ago · 10:44
Why does a room stay silent when many people privately disagree? This episode explores pluralistic ignorance, the social misreading that makes private majorities behave like public minorities. We begin with the familiar silence of meetings, classrooms, dinners, and groups where nobody objects, so everyone assumes nobody else is uncomfortable. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
Limerence: When Your Mind Turns a Person Into a Loop
2mo ago · 10:32
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Confidence That Collapses When You Try to Explain
2mo ago · 10:41
You think you understand a zipper, Wi-Fi, inflation, or a toilet—until someone asks you to explain the steps. This episode explores the illusion of explanatory depth: the research-backed gap between feeling familiar with a system and actually understanding its causal mechanism. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Unfinished Task That Keeps Calling Your Name
2mo ago · 11:04
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Blush That Apologizes Before You Do: Embarrassment as Social Repair
2mo ago · 11:55
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Tiny Movement That Makes You Furious: The Psychology of Misokinesia
2mo ago · 11:08
This episode was generated with AI assistance.
Why a Year Felt Like Forever at Seven and Vanishes at Forty
3mo ago · 11:42
Ask a seven-year-old how long until their birthday and the wait feels endless. Ask an adult where the year went and they genuinely can't say. Same calendar, completely different felt duration. In this episode we trace why subjective time speeds up with age — from Adrian Bejan's 2019 physics theory that we perceive time as a stream of mental images that slows with our eye movements, to the proportionality and novelty accounts, to 2025 research showing older adults still recall meaningful moments vividly even as routine time blurs. We untangle the two questions that always get confused: how long
The Secret That Hurts When Nobody Is Asking
3mo ago · 9:52
Some secrets hurt most when nobody is questioning you. They return in the shower, on the bus, or right before sleep. This episode explores the newer psychology of secrecy: the idea that secrets are costly not mainly because we actively hide them in conversation, but because the mind keeps returning to them in private. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Song That Won’t Leave: Earworms as Mental Habits
3mo ago · 9:31
Why does one chorus loop in your mind for hours, even when you never chose to play it? This episode explores new 2025 research suggesting earworms may be more than random musical annoyances. They may be a form of mental habit, connected to everyday loops like tapping, counting, checking, rehearsing, and repeating. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Last Note You Hear: How the Peak-End Rule Means Your Memories Are Lying to You
3mo ago · 10:14
Daniel Kahneman's peak-end rule reveals that our brains don't average experiences—they take snapshots of the most intense moment and the final moment, then discard everything else. A 2022 meta-analysis of 174 studies confirms this effect is large and robust, explaining why a colonoscopy that ends gently feels better than a shorter one that stops abruptly, and why that vacation where everything went wrong except the final sunset still glows in memory. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
The Third-Person Trick: Why Talking to Yourself Using Your Own Name Changes Everything
3mo ago · 12:25
Research from Ethan Kross's lab at the University of Michigan reveals that silently talking to yourself in the second or third person creates psychological distance that facilitates emotional regulation—without depleting cognitive resources. This episode was generated with AI assistance.
Scared Together: Why Haunted Houses Are Better for Your Relationship Than Date Night
3mo ago · 12:32
A University of Florida study across three Halloween seasons reveals that shared fear experiences can strengthen relationship bonds—but only if you talk about it afterward. Psychologist Jane Wiley and colleagues conducted five studies at a commercial haunted attraction, finding that couples who experienced higher levels of fear together reported feeling closer—with one crucial caveat. This episode was generated with AI assistance.