There are many cultural and social factors involved in making a baby into a man or a woman. But biologically speaking, sex starts when you’re just a tiny group of cells in your mother’s uterus.

When we learn a new skill and continue to practice it, our brain cells establish connections that solidify that new activity in our muscle memory and in our body. That’s how later on we can do that activity repeatedly without paying attention to it. The flipside of this is that to unlearn a habit that’s become ingrained in us we have to demolish that network of connections

Our most recent run of luck influences our high-risk choices at the poker table or in our everyday lives, a new study suggests.

Every year you set out determined to stick to your New Year’s resolutions. But year after year you fall off track and quickly abandon them. So why are resolutions so hard to keep?

We may expect great transformations throughout human culture, as mankind becomes more responsible for its knowledge, and thus its deeds.

It’s a question that’s reverberated through the ages – are humans, though imperfect, essentially kind, sensible, good-natured creatures?

A study of hundreds of brain scans sheds light on abnormalities common to people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Between 60 and 80 percent of people surveyed have not been forthcoming with their doctors about information that could be relevant to their health, according to a new study.

Most people are probably familiar with the classic fight or flight response to a feared stimulus.

When people come together in a crowd, physical and emotional connections define their movement, state of mind and will to act. Understanding crowds can help us manage the panic caused by a terrorist attack

Many of our psychological traits are innate in origin. There is overwhelming evidence from twin, family and general population studies that all manner of personality traits, as well as things such as intelligence, sexuality and risk of psychiatric disorders, are highly heritable

When it comes to people, there are only about a dozen life stories in the whole world, and each archetype has its own obvious characteristics.

There are numerous things that make our life "work" for us. Some of these are things we learned along the way. And of course, there are things that make our life "not work so well". One thing that has worked for me is persistence.

All day every day we experience things: physical sensations, emotions, and thought patterns. Most of our experience we fail to observe. While having an experience we don’t notice it. While this is well and good when it comes to sensation in our feet or many other aspects of living, failure to observe certain parts of our physical, emotional, and cognitive experience...

Less parental warmth and more harshness at home can affect how aggressive children become and whether they lack empathy and a moral compass, according to a new study.

Alcoholics Anonymous was established as a form of benign anarchy. Members have to want to help themselves—and one another. While a great number of people see value in the mutual aid of Alcoholics Anonymous, many of them would be surprised to discover that the concept of mutual aid was popularized in the 20th century by the Russian anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) with his 1902 book Mutual Aid.

One of the most important aspects of meaningful conversation is listening. If you’re asking important questions and not listening, you’re not having a conversation at all; you are giving a soliloquy.

Evolution built shame into human nature because it served an important function for our foraging ancestors, a new paper argues.

Can love be learned? In principle, yes, but there are important requirements. Love necessitates a positive, embracing view of ourselves and of life. Fromm claimed that only a person who has reached developmental maturity is truly capable of loving. Such maturity implies self-acceptance and overcoming narcissism.

"They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!" This often parodied quote from Mel Gibson’s William Wallace in the film Braveheart is something of a contradiction, and yet its sentiment is easy to understand. Nothing gets our hackles up more than being told that we have no choice over something.

Picking our fingernails, eating a quart of ice cream at a single sitting, or mandatory daily vigorous exercise. Frequent prescription drug or alcohol use. Addictions are a reliance on any substance or activity that masks our emotions and provides an immediate but temporary dose of pleasure and distraction.

Sparkly jewellery, expensive shoes, designer watches – who doesn’t love a bit of “bling”?  In 2017 Australians spent A$28.5 billion on ornamenting themselves with clothing, cosmetics, and accessories. But this obsession with decorating our bodies isn’t just a trivial activity. Archaeological evidence shows us it’s actually a large part of what makes us human.

When a person of colour with light skin rises to prominence, or becomes the first to occupy a particular position, it’s often heralded as a sign that structural barriers to the progress of people of colour have been removed. This was the case when Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in May, joining the British royal family as the Duchess of Sussex.