studies on Hostility

The last 80 years of American politics have unfortunately seen a dramatic increase in political polarization. One reporter likened the relationship between Republicans and Democrats to the famous Shak...

As many theologians have helpfully described, there is a healthy place for doubting that is integral to faith. When approached thoughtfully and sincerely, these doubts can lead to a deepening understa...

Two decades after I worked with the airmen, I read a fascinating article, “The Quasimodo Complex,” in The British Journal of Plastic Surgery, Two physicians reported in 1967 on a landmark study of e...

Recently a group of researchers conducted a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs. The researchers reported a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music...

Nonverbal communication can make a huge difference in how a question is received. Only 7 percent of what we say is conveyed through words, 38 percent through vocal element (tone), and the remainder th...

In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ...

The word Gehenna is used by Jesus twelve times in the four Gospels. God’s first response to the belittlement of his name is this Greek word Gehenna, which we would translate “hell.” The interesting th...

In Vanishing Grace , Philip Yancey examines the growing negative perceptions of evangelicals. Although the book was written in 2014, these dynamics have only intensified in the era of MAGA and Ch...

Have you ever felt like some people take longer to leave a parking spot when you are waiting for them? Well, apparently you are not just imagining it…Three separate studies have demonstrated that this...

I wondered whether negative feelings against religion were a local phenomenon until I came across a poll of eighteen thousand people in twenty-three countries. In preparation for a 2010 debate between...

Ruut Veenhoven, the Dutch sociologist known as the “godfather of happiness research,” maintains the World Database of Happiness. And when he looked at all the countries of the world in terms of happin...

In their book Friend and Foe, social psychologists Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer cite a study by Emory University scientist Frans de Waal regarding comparison. De Waal trained capuchin monkeys ...

The Baylor Religion Survey "is the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever conducted," aiming to go beyond just whether someone goes to church or believes in God, but probing at...

A fascinating study recently revealed differences in brain structure correlate with political orientation. The study demonstrated that greater conservatism was associated with increased gray matter vo...

According to a study performed in 2010 by the Fetzer Institute: Sixty-seven percent of Americans agree that the US population is composed of generally forgiving people, but 58% also agree that ther...

Split second decisions can reveal prejudices that we aren't aware of ourselves. This is particularly important in split-second decisions with life-or-death consequences, such as police officers ha...

Researchers at the University of Kentucky and University of Central Florida who explored the neurobiology of the selfish-selfless spectrum found that most of us are neither extremely selfish (which re...

Statistics show that 80 percent of new pastors leave the ministry within five years. A friend once remarked, “If they were able to pastor churches without people, they might last ten years.” Most past...

The vast majority of violence oppressing the poor is not driven by the overwhelming power of the perpetrators—it’s driven by the utter vulnerability of the victims. Give the poor a strong, consistent ...

Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...

For most of the late twentieth century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched. Some political scien...

The Clinical psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi describes how our minds, without stimuli, tends to quickly turn towards negative thoughts, our dissatisfaction. Contrary to what we tend to assume, ...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a best-selling statistician, argues that it is not even mere resilience we need, but what he calls antifragility . He groups things into three categories. First, fragile...

In I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me , John Ortberg uses an interesting analogy for an aspect of our relationships. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner announced the Starshot Initiati...

Researchers have found that when prisoners are placed in solitary confinement with little human contact and minimal sensory stimulation, severe psychological and physical issues often ensue: depressio...

In his book The DNA of Relationships counselor Gary Smalley argues from countless hours of research and observation alongside the wisdom of the Bible that we are hardwired for relationship. This i...

Current research indicates that personality traits are hardwired; they’re largely hereditary and remain relatively constant throughout our lives.1 If we’re outgoing or reserved, energetic or subdued, ...

It’s an argument that may never be fully resolved, but scientific research has shown what most of us probably already suspected: there is some truth to both perspectives. One study focused on factors ...

There has been a paradigm shift going on in neighborhoods in the United States since the end of WWII. For decades before the 1940s, neighborhoods were places where people were known and were active. W...

Most of us recognize that self-deception hampers our ability to grow and live healthy lives. The Arbinger Institute takes it a bit further in their best-selling book Leadership and Self-Deception ...