I remember the first time I traveled outside of the United States. My mother, who’d traveled internationally long before I did, kept going on about travel advisories. She said it was important that I check what safety advisories the government had in place for certain countries. For Americans, checking travel advisories is the norm before going abroad. But have you ever thought about what other places think about travel safety in the US? Surprisingly, despite the US being one of the most advanced places in the world, many nations still warn their citizens to be careful when visiting the states.…

There are two ways people can try to improve their emotional intelligence. The hard way, which involves studying the concepts, training yourself to analyze interactions, and working case by case to isolate emotions from other motivations. The easy way, which involves memorizing phrases that inspire positive emotional reactions, and training yourself to use these phrases in the place of others that can be more counterproductive. The examples speak for themselves. Here are five specific things that people with high emotional intelligence learn to say reflexively, over and over, and why they work better than the alternatives. 1. "I apologize." Say…

When I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, doing research in cognitive psychology, our lab group went out every now and then for nachos and beers. It was a great opportunity for us to ask our adviser about things that wouldn't likely come up in our more formal meetings. At one of those gatherings, I summoned up the courage to ask him a question that had been on my mind for some time: "Do you think cognitive psychology can make the world a better place?" I had asked a simple yes-or-no question, so he chose…

If you’ve ever worried about the privacy of your sensitive data when seeking a computer or phone repair, a new study suggests you have good reason. It found that privacy violations occurred at least 50 percent of the time, not surprisingly with female customers bearing the brunt. Researchers at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recovered logs from laptops after receiving overnight repairs from 12 commercial shops. The logs showed that technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that two of those shops also copied data onto a personal device. Devices belonging to females were more…