One man’s music really is another man’s noise, based on a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers found that only cultures previously exposed to Western music formed ...

Do you ever feel a nagging sense of discomfort when your actions don't match your beliefs? For example, you might tell a small white lie even though you value honesty. That uneasy feeling is known as ...

Cognitive dissonance happens when you hold two conflicting thoughts in your mind at the same time — like loving both hamburgers and cows. Cognitive dissonance is a theory in social psychology first ...

Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake—ready to take true believers aboard. Several ...

Jocelyn Solis-Moreira is a New York-based science journalist whose work has appeared in Health, Live Science, and Discover Magazine, among other publications. She holds a master's degree in psychology ...

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory that describes the discomfort of holding two or more opposing beliefs, or the conflict between an action and a single belief. Maybe you experience it ...