This Is America

Fear

Our Not-So-Magnificent Obsessions

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on September 29, 2022

What percentage of the population experiences a phobia?

Career

Is Status-Seeking the Secret Ingredient for Cultural Change?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on August 30, 2022

What is the role of status-seeking in the creation and reception of avant-garde work?

Embarrassment

Are Human Emotions Hard-Wired, Pre-Cultural and Universal?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on August 2, 2022

How emotions can be successfully unpacked.

Psychology

The Social Psychology of Cheerfulness

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on May 24, 2022

Why cheerfulness is an overlooked, undervalued emotion.

Placebo

The Power of Premonitions

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on May 3, 2022

If premonitions are impossible, why do many of us have them?

Psychiatry

Is Psychiatry Facing an Existential Crisis?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on April 20, 2022

Psychiatrists, a new book maintains, cannot establish chains of causation for mental disorders.

Relationships

A Review of "Paradise Falls": Lessons From Love Canal

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on March 29, 2022

How corporate elites and politicians have evaded their responsibility to address environmental catastrophes.

Law and Crime

The United States of Surveillance

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on March 8, 2022

The new age of electronic surveillance features NSA data-mining and an economy that depends on the monetization of private information.

Health

How Reliable Are Articles in Peer-Review Medical Journals?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on February 1, 2022

Why the U.S. spends more money on health care than other affluent countries.

Grief

Is Grief Healthy or Pathological?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on January 11, 2022

How grief can help us re-examine our “practical identities.”

Spirituality

Americans’ Do-It-Yourself Death-Care Rituals

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on November 9, 2021

New death rituals are more improvised, individualized, and reflect a green burial ethos.

Anger

Is Aggression Imprinted In Human Nature?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on October 19, 2021

Are people programmed to make love, war, both, or neither?

Heuristics

How People Can Be Rational and Irrational

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on September 28, 2021

An analysis of mistaken beliefs, fallacious reasoning, and the tools of rationality.

Creativity

The Post-Pandemic Future of America’s Cities

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on September 14, 2021

How can cities improve underperforming public health systems, policing and schools?

Trust

How Has Government in the U.S. Become “The Problem"?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on August 3, 2021

Explaining the stalemate on environmental regulations and the administrative state during the last 40 years.

Memory

The Complex Beauty of Memories

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on June 15, 2021

Involuntarily aroused, feelings are interpreted as emotions by the unique filter of memory.

Identity

Old and New Scripts for Difficult Conversations

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on May 25, 2021

Powerful narratives illuminate how we should talk, to whom, and when to get greater clarity and compassion in our relationships.

Environment

Why We Are Living Longer

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on May 11, 2021

Government oversight and regulation played a pivotal role in increasing life expectancy.

Education

It’s Time for a Declaration of Interdependence

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on April 30, 2021

What a new social contract related to childhood, education, work, healthcare, and aging should look like.

Cognition

Does It Have To Be Us Against Them?

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D. on April 13, 2021

Can Americans adopt a new way to address conflict that is more satisfying than fighting, running away or staying silent?