Business and Decisions
Why Do We Misremember the Pain of a Colonoscopy?
Two patients undergo the same medical procedure. One suffers for 8 minutes; the other, for 24.
7 min readRead
Blog: page 5
Attachment Style
Why Resisting Breakup Pain Makes It Last Longer (What the Tao Te Ching Teaches About Water)
Why Resisting Breakup Pain Makes It Last Longer The harder you fight the pain of a breakup, the longer it takes to go away. It sounds like…
7 min readRead
Attachment Style
Why Is Oxytocin Called the 'Cuddle Hormone'?
From the delivery room to the nickname Oxytocin wasn't discovered in a hug but in a uterus. In the early twentieth century, British physiol…
8 min readRead
Relationships and Social Life
Why You Transform at Local Festivals
Every August, thousands of towns and cities across Spain pause for a few days to celebrate what they've been celebrating for generations. A…
9 min readRead
Self-Awareness
Why Can Your Brain React to Self-Criticism Like a Physical Threat?
When you talk to yourself harshly, your body can respond with part of the same alarm equipment it would use in the face of danger. The idea…
8 min readRead
Emotional Intelligence
Why a Hair in Your Soup Disgusts You More Than a Hair on Your Head
It's the exact same hair. Same substance, same origin, same chemical makeup.
9 min readRead
Business and Decisions
Why Can a Random Number Change What You Think Something Is Worth?
A wheel of fortune that stops on 65 can lead someone to estimate that there are more African countries in the UN. It sounds like a carnival…
6 min readRead
16 Personalities
Population Percentages by Personality Type
The statistical snapshot: how the 16 types are distributed The distribution of MBTI profiles in the population isn't symmetrical. The data…
5 min readRead
Work and Productivity
Arousal Procrastinator: do you really perform better under pressure?
The arousal procrastinator notices that their attention and energy only really kick in when the deadline is close. It isn't that they avoid…
5 min readRead
Work and Productivity
Avoidant Procrastinator: when postponing protects you from the fear of failing
The avoidant procrastinator doesn't postpone out of laziness, but to protect themselves from the discomfort of possibly failing or having o…
4 min readRead
Work and Productivity
Decisional Procrastinator: when the block is choosing where to start
The decisional procrastinator doesn't avoid the task itself: they avoid the moment of deciding where to start, and that single step can del…
4 min readRead
Business and Decisions
Cautious: Consistently Avoiding Risk
The cautious style consistently avoids risk: it prefers the safe option, even if that means giving up something more exciting or potentiall…
4 min readRead
Projective Tests
What Your Drawing Says, According to the Machover Method (and What the Real Evidence Says)
In 1949, clinical psychologist Karen Machover published Personality Projection in the Drawing of the Human Figure, a book that would become…
8 min readRead
Chronotype
What Chronotype Is, and What It Says About Your Personality
Some people open their eyes before any alarm goes off and are already thinking clearly by seven in the morning. Others, at that same hour,…
8 min readRead
Enneagram
What Is the Enneagram?
The enneagram is a personality classification system that describes nine patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. It's used mainly in se…
6 min readRead
Love Languages
What Is John Gottman's 'Love Lab'?
A lab apartment for observing real couples John Gottman, psychologist and researcher at the University of Washington, spent several decades…
6 min readRead
Learning Style
What Is Ned Herrmann's Brain Dominance Model?
In the 1970s, consultant Ned Herrmann, who was then working in executive training at General Electric, asked an unusual question for the ti…
5 min readRead
Big Five
What Is the Big Five Test and What Is It For?
The Big Five test is a questionnaire that measures personality along the five dimensions of the Big Five model: openness, conscientiousness…
6 min readRead
Self-Awareness
Autumn Fatigue: What It Is and What Science Says About Feeling Tired in the Fall
"Astenia otoñal," autumn fatigue, is a phrase that turns up every September in the Spanish press, in pharmacies and in everyday conversatio…
8 min readRead
Learning Style
What Is Brain Integration, According to Daniel Siegel?
Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel and psychotherapist Tina Payne Bryson, in their book The WholeBrain Child (2011), take as their starting poin…
6 min readRead
Self-Awareness
What Is Intelligence? Not Even the Experts Agree
They've been at it for more than a century. Entire university departments are devoted to it.
9 min readRead
Big Five
What Is Big Five Personality?
In the Big Five model, personality is a set of traits: relatively stable tendencies to think, feel, and act in certain ways across differen…
6 min readRead
Learning Style
What Is Neuroplasticity?
For much of the twentieth century, science described the nervous system as an almost fixed structure once brain maturation was complete: ri…
5 min readRead
Love Languages
What Is Gottman's 'Positive vs. Negative Sentiment Override'?
John Gottman, an American psychologist who spent several decades observing real couples in his University of Washington lab, describes a me…
6 min readRead
16 Personalities
What Is Myers-Briggs Theory?
MyersBriggs psychological type theory is a model of personality that explains differences in behavior through a small number of preferences…
5 min readRead
Big Five
MBTI vs. Big Five: Which One Is Better?
Personality psychology has two big, popular models, but they don't enjoy the same scientific backing. Of the two, the Big Five is the one w…
6 min readRead
Enneagram
What Is an Enneagram Type, and How Many Are There?
An enneagram type is each of the nine personality types the enneagram describes. In the model, it isn't a list of traits but a structure: a…
6 min readRead
Enneagram
What Is a Psychometric Test?
A psychometric test is an objective, standardized measurement procedure used to quantify unobservable psychological phenomena based on a sa…
6 min readRead
Self-Awareness
What Happens to the Human Mind During an Eclipse
On August 12, 2026, the sky genuinely darkened over much of Spain. And with it, something far older than astronomy kicked into gear inside…
8 min readRead
Big Five
What the Big Five Test Actually Measures
The Big Five test measures five broad domains of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and n…
7 min readRead
Learning Style
What Roger Sperry's Split-Brain Experiment Revealed
In the early 1950s, neuroscientist Roger Sperry, then at the University of Chicago, and his doctoral student Ronald Myers made a discovery…
5 min readRead
Enneagram
What Does 'Enneagram' Mean?
Enneagram is a word of Greek origin that names, first and foremost, a drawing: a circle with nine points and lines connecting them. A model…
5 min readRead
Big Five
What Does OCEAN Mean in Psychology?
The OCEAN acronym OCEAN is an acronym made from the initials of the Big Five personality factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion…
4 min readRead
Love Languages
What Are the 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' in Relationships?
John Gottman, after analyzing thousands of hours of real couples' interactions in his research at the University of Washington, identified…
7 min readRead
Love Languages
What Are Gottman's 'Bids for Connection'?
Within his research on couples at the University of Washington's "Love Lab," John Gottman noticed something that happens dozens of times a…
6 min readRead
16 Personalities
Who Created the 16 Personalities Test?
The type indicator now popularly known as the "16 personalities test," or the MBTI (MyersBriggs Type Indicator), was created by two women w…
5 min readRead
Big Five
Who invented the Big Five model?
The Big Five Model is a classification system that groups individual differences in personality into five fundamental dimensions. Many rese…
5 min readRead
Love Languages
Gifts as a Love Language: The Detail That Says 'I Was Thinking of You'
Gifts: when an object proves you were thought of For people whose main language is gifts, what matters isn't the price, it's the tangible p…
6 min readRead
Relationships and Social Life
Pocket Relationships: The Bond You Keep Tucked Away Until You Need It
A pocket relationship is a bond designed, from day one, not to grow: you tuck it away when you don't need it and take it out when you do. Z…
7 min readRead
Self-Awareness
High Resilience: Bouncing Back Reasonably Fast From Adversity
High resilience: adapting without getting stuck in the difficulty High resilience describes a notable current capacity to hold steady and b…
5 min readRead
Self-Awareness
Developing Resilience: You Recover, Even If It Takes More Than You'd Like
Developing resilience: recovering, with more effort than you'd like Developing resilience describes a middle point, not an extreme: you rec…
5 min readRead
Self-Awareness
Vulnerable, Self-Aware Resilience: Being Aware of Your Vulnerability Is Already Self-Knowledge
Vulnerable, selfaware resilience: a moment, not a sentence This result indicates that, right now, difficulties are hitting you especially h…
5 min readRead
Attachment Style
Seven Things You Might Be Attached to Without Realizing It, and None of Them Is a Person
When people talk about "attachment," they almost always think of love. But psychologist Walter Riso gathers, in his book Desapegarse sin an…
9 min readRead
16 Personalities
What Each Letter of the Personality Code Means
The fourletter code of the MyersBriggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is built by choosing one preference from each of four pairs. Each letter sums…
6 min readRead
Attachment Style
Letting Go of Needing to Be Right After a Breakup (Be the Pebble, Not the Jade)
Letting Go of Needing to Be Right After a Breakup There's a kind of pain after a breakup that isn't looking to heal: it's looking to win. I…
5 min readRead
Business and Decisions
Negotiation Techniques: The Boy Scout Trick That Triples a Yes
A boy of eleven or twelve is selling fivedollar tickets to a Boy Scout show. The passerby he approaches says no.
6 min readRead
Work and Productivity
Technostress in the Age of AI: Why Keeping Up Is So Exhausting
"With AI, I did in one hour what used to take me a week. " Messages like this circulate daily on LinkedIn, and leave many readers with an u…
14 min readRead
16 Personalities
Is the 16 Personalities Test Based on Carl Jung's Theory?
The MyersBriggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has its roots directly in the theory of psychological types put forward by the Swiss psychiatrist Car…
3 min readRead
Projective Tests
What Your House, Your Tree, and Your Person Say, According to Buck's H-T-P Method (and What the Real Evidence Says)
Three blank sheets of paper and a bareminimum instruction: draw a house, a tree, and a person. That's how one of the most widely used drawi…
6 min readRead
Projective Tests
What Your Family Drawing Says, According to Corman's Method (and What the Real Evidence Says)
"Draw a family. Not yours: one you imagine.
5 min readRead