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Sam McNerney
Science writer
I graduated from Hamilton College with a degree in Philosophy. Now I write about philosophy (mostly epistemology) and psychology (mostly decision making and well-being) at Scientific American and Big Think. My personal blog is SamMcNerney.com. @SamMcNerney.
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Cognitive science exists in a golden era. The amount of resources pouring into research that examines human nature is unmatched by any other time in history.
Willpower is a limited resource easily drained by everyday activity.
One paradox of creativity is that it’s restricted by the senses. The eyes and visual cortex perceive a narrow slice of the electromagnet spectrum. Our sense of taste and smell […]
By the time he put the finishing touches on the Rite of Spring in November of 1912 in the Châtelard Hotel in Clarens, Switzerland, Stravinsky had spent three years studying Russian pagan […]
The “endowment effect" explains our irrational tendency to overvalue something just because we own it.
A few months ago I reported on a 2009 study out of the Kellogg School of Management by William Maddux and Adam Galinsky. Through a series of five studies Maddux […]
“[T]he Author of Nature has determin’d us to receive… a Moral Sense, todirect our Actions, and to give us still nobler Pleasures.” That appeal was made in 1725 by Scottish philosopher […]