“Queueing has become a symbol of Britain’s civilised, fair, quiet way of doing things. But is it all it is cracked up to be? The person at the front of the soup kitchen line gets fed first even if the one at the end is hungriest. The youth at boarding gate five gets to sit …
Part of an interview conducted by Sarah Lyall with David Cornwell ( John Le Carre) and Ben Macintyre, writers on the theme of spying: Sarah Lyall: Is there something about the British psyche that makes spying, or at least duplicity, an enticing prospect? Ben Macintyre: We Brits are particularly susceptible to the double life, aren’t …
Last Saturday I discussed the the unhappiness of teenagers. I would now like to pursue the subject Why has their unhappiness reached such huge proportions? Many reasons have been put forward: a rise in the divorce rate, a shift away from intrinsic to extrinsic goals, which can lead to a sense of not being able to …
Something is undermining young people’s mental health, especially that of girls. A study conducted by Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, looked at four studies covering 7 million people, ranging from teens to adults in the US. Among her findings: high school students in the 2010s were twice as likely to …
Why do we find rejection so upsetting? After all, it’s almost never life-threatening to be rejected. The reason lies in our interdependence. Human beings need one another in order to thrive, particularly at the beginning of our lives. During that period of development the baby will die if there is no one there to look …
