There is an old piece of dating advice that refuses to die.

"Just assume they like you."

Walk into the room with confidence.

Smile.

Relax.

Act as though attraction is already underway.

Like many clichés, it survives because it contains just enough truth to be dangerous.

A new study suggests that believing someone likes you really does change your experience of dating.

It just doesn't change dating in the way most people think.

The researchers discovered something much more interesting than another argument for confidence. They uncovered the difference between confidence and accuracy—and those two qualities don't always travel together.

Confidence made people more romantically interested.

Accuracy made people more romantically attractive.

Those are very different psychological skills.

History has a wicked sense of humor.

It waits patiently until we become absolutely certain about something...

...and then produces a receipt.

Take the name Tiffany.

If I told you there was a Lady Tiffany walking through England sometime around the year 1200, you would probably smile politely and assume I'd confused the Crusades with a jewelry store.

You would be wrong.

The historians would be right.

Derived from the Greek Theophania, forms of the name Tiffany appear in medieval England centuries before Shakespeare, centuries before Columbus, and centuries before anyone associated the name with little blue boxes and Fifth Avenue.

A novelist who placed Lady Tiffany in a meticulously researched medieval village would almost certainly receive letters from readers pointing out the "mistake."

The mistake would belong to the readers.

Historians have a name for this peculiar collision between truth and expectation.

They call it the Tiffany Problem.

For years we've asked the wrong question.

When someone compulsively watches pornography, has repeated affairs, can't stop scrolling dating apps, or feels driven by sexual urges that repeatedly damage relationships, we instinctively ask:

"Why is this person so sexual?"

It's a reasonable question.

According to a fascinating new study published in the Journal of Sex Research, it may also be incomplete.

The researchers weren't primarily interested in how much people desired sex.

They were interested in something far less obvious:

How well people understand their own minds.

Psychologists call this mentalizing.

It may be one of the most important psychological abilities you've never heard of.

Most cult films gather fans.

The Big Lebowski gathered pilgrims.

People quote it the way other people quote scripture.

They celebrate "Lebowski Fests."

They wear jelly sandals and Pendleton sweaters with surprising sincerity.

"The Dude abides" has become less of a movie line than a tiny philosophy for surviving modern life.

That is strange.

Because The Big Lebowski is, on its face, an absurd comedy about a soiled rug, fake kidnappers, incompetent criminals, league bowling, and a man who spends an astonishing amount of time drinking White Russians.

It should have disappeared into the VHS bargain bin sometime around 2002.

Instead, it became mythology.

I don't think that's an accident.

I think the Coen brothers made a spiritual film while pretending to make a comedy.

And I think the best key to understanding it isn't Freud, Jung, or Joseph Campbell.

It's Kali.

Not because the Dude is Kali.

But because the movie itself performs Kali's work.

One day psychology may look back on our era with genuine bewilderment.

Not because we misunderstood depression.

Or anxiety.

Or trauma.

But because we consistently confused biology with morality.

Future generations may find it astonishing that otherwise intelligent folks routinely looked at inherited differences in emotional regulation and concluded they were witnessing differences in virtue.

They may wonder how we could have been so certain.

The answer is surprisingly simple.

Human beings cannot see nervous systems.

We can only see behavior.

Everything else is interpretation.

If you've ever traveled abroad, you've probably come home with exactly three observations.

The Italians talk with their hands.

The British queue as though waiting in line were a sacrament.

And Americans smile at strangers with the unnerving enthusiasm of Labrador retrievers.

Whether any of these stereotypes are entirely true is almost beside the point.

Human beings are compulsive pattern-makers. We don't simply notice individuals; we assign personalities to entire nations.

Now psychologists have wandered into this dangerous neighborhood.

A sweeping review of international research examined how narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—the infamous Dark Triad—vary across countries.

The findings suggest that wealth, political systems, corruption, ecological hardship, childhood instability, and cultural values all appear to shape how frequently these darker traits emerge.

Before anyone starts canceling vacation plans, the researchers emphasize that these are statistical averages, not moral report cards.

Wonderful people live everywhere. So do insufferable ones.

Naturally, the internet responded with all the restraint of a caffeinated raccoon.

Of all the blessings humanity has invented over the past several thousand years, I think one of the finest may have come from an alien.

Which is an odd sentence to write.

Especially when the alien had green blood, pointed ears, and the emotional expressiveness of a particularly thoughtful thermostat.

Yet here we are.

"Live long and prosper."

Four words.

We've heard them so often that they've dissolved into nostalgia—a hand gesture, a convention greeting, a Leonard Nimoy impression at Comic-Con.

We've stopped hearing what they're actually saying.

Which is a shame.

Because hidden inside those four words is a complete philosophy of how to live.

Not how to succeed.

How to live.

A therapist sits across from a new client.

It's their second session.

The client has spent ninety minutes describing a lifetime of criticism from her mother.

She leaves the office with a recommendation that will alter the architecture of her family forever:

"Stop speaking to her."

Maybe the therapist is right.

Maybe the mother is genuinely dangerous.

Maybe decades of emotional abuse have made continued contact impossible.

Or maybe...

the therapist has just made one of the most consequential recommendations of a person's life after hearing exactly one witness.

That should give every therapist pause.

Not because estrangement is never appropriate.

It absolutely is.

But because permanent family rupture should never become emotionally routine.

There are few experiences more fascinating than watching someone discover a deeply held moral conviction about thirty seconds after becoming anxious.

One minute:

"Wear whatever you want."

The next:

"I'm just saying... I don't think married women should post pictures like that."

Curious.

Yesterday this was a swimsuit.

Today it's Western civilization.

A recent study published in Cognition and Emotion found something therapists have quietly suspected for years.

When men were experimentally induced to feel sexually jealous, they became somewhat more supportive of what researchers call feminine honor norms—the belief that respectable women should behave modestly, remain sexually faithful, and avoid actions that could damage either their own reputation or that of their partner.

There is perhaps no fictional character who has been more confidently—and more persistently—misunderstood than Commander Spock.

For nearly sixty years, audiences have looked at the raised eyebrow, the measured cadence, the clipped syntax, and the unwavering devotion to logic and arrived at the same diagnosis.

"Emotionally unavailable."

Cold.

Detached.

A brilliant man who, if he ever wandered into a couples therapist's office, would undoubtedly be told to "get in touch with his feelings."

As a marriage and family therapist, I have a different opinion.

Spock wasn't emotionally unavailable.

He was differentiated.

Couples often ask me what intimacy looks like.

They expect a complicated answer.

Neurochemistry.

Attachment Theory.

Trauma histories.

Love languages.

Someone usually mentions eye contact.

No one has ever said,

"Maybe our hearts need to get on the same schedule."

Oddly enough, they may not be entirely wrong.

A fascinating new study published in PNAS Nexus found that when people spend time in close physical proximity, their heart rates begin to synchronize.

The effect was strongest among people who already knew one another—and strongest still when they were physically close and paying attention to the same thing.

Not talking.

Not touching.

Not gazing soulfully into one another's eyes.

Simply sharing attention.

That tiny distinction may tell us something profound about intimacy.

There was a time when parents worried that video games would rot your brain.

How adorably twentieth century.

Now the video game doesn't want to melt your brain.

It wants your Visa.

Not by force, of course. That would be illegal.

It wants you to volunteer.

It doesn't call it gambling. That would invite awkward conversations with legislators.

It calls it a loot box, which sounds less like a casino mechanic and more like something your grandfather buried behind the barn before leaving for the war.

Open the chest.

Maybe you'll discover an extraordinarily rare weapon skin.

Maybe you'll get a pair of digital socks.

Either way, your credit card has already participated.