For most of the last century, psychology has told us a comforting story: your personality is the steady backbone of who you are, predictable from early adulthood and largely resistant to change. But a quiet revolution in research is undermining that assumption, suggesting that our traits may be far more flexible than we thought, ...
We like to tell ourselves we’re adaptable, adventurous, open to new possibilities. Yet when a promising job offer appears, a healthy habit beckons, or a relationship needs a hard but honest conversation, many of us feel something closer to dread than excitement. Change, even the kind that looks objectively positive, can land in the ...
On paper, humans should be terrible at survival. We are slow, soft-skinned, and born helpless for far longer than most other animals. Yet we have built cities, spacecraft, and global cultures – not because we are the strongest, but because we are wired to turn to one another. Still, for all our talk about ...
Some people seem to walk through fire and come out with new ideas, while others feel singed by far smaller sparks. A layoff, a breakup, a diagnosis, a climate disaster – life keeps throwing curveballs, yet certain individuals not only cope but grow. For decades, psychologists framed this as a mystery of “grit” or ...
Across cultures and centuries, people have looked to animals to explain what makes a human heart keep going when the world turns rough. Today, scientists are mapping that old instinct onto modern psychology, finding that the creatures we identify with can reveal how we recover, adapt, and grow after stress. It’s not magic; it’s ...
