Jorge's Blog

[Image credit: WikiEducator ] W e already know social media is designed to be compelling. What some of us may not know is precisely how,  and that the mechanisms are drawn from the same behavioural science used to engineer slot machines. Social media platforms are among the most psychologically sophisticated environments ever engineered ( Fogg, 2002 ). They mobilise fundamental forces in cognition, reward, identity, and fear to capture attention in ways users seldom consciously register. By 2024, the average person spent nearly two and a half hours daily on social media ( Twenge & Haidt, 2024 ), a metric that has remained flat into 2026 ( DataReportal, 2026 ). The behavioural consequences are a central concern in psychological research. The most powerful theoretical anchor is Skinner's variable-ratio reinforcement : behaviour is most robustly maintained not by consistent reward but by unpredictable ones. Every scroll is a pull of the lever. The neurobiological substrat...

A single number, thousands of variants — but does the promise match the science? (📷:empowervmedia) I magine a single number that claims to predict your risk of depression, your expected years of schooling, or your likelihood of a heart attack — derived entirely from your DNA. That is the promise of the polygenic score (PGS): a summary statistic aggregating the influence of thousands of common genetic variants into one figure. Since their first systematic development in 2009, over 1,000 peer-reviewed publications have employed this methodology - spanning schizophrenia, educational attainment, and alcohol misuse. The scientific appeal is genuine. The hype surrounding it, however, demands scrutiny. Polygenic scores are statistical predictors , not biological verdicts. Within the populations for which they were built, their explanatory power can be notable - reaching up to 13% of variance explained for educational attainment and 24% for height (Mostafavi et al., eLi...

H ow do people decide what to believe? Why does misinformation spread so easily? Why do news stories persuade some audiences, alienate others, and disappear entirely for others? And what happens to democracy when journalism, culture, psychology, and algorithms all collide in the same information environment? These are the questions that drive the article   "Psychology, Culture, Journalism, and Democracy: A Critical Literature Review of Their Intersections in the Digital Age" . This piece offers an interdisciplinary review of how cognitive processes, cultural values, media systems, and digital technologies interact to shape public knowledge and democratic life today. At its core, the article argues that journalism is not only a communicative institution. It is also a psychological and cultural institution. News is never just “information”. It is interpreted through identity, emotion, trust, social belonging, and the mental shortcuts we all use to make sense of a complex world....