All posts tagged: consequences

Why Lying Persists Despite the Consequences

Why Lying Persists Despite the Consequences

Published by Jenni Sidey

Lying and falsehoods create a tremendous problem for the criminal justice system, resulting in large numbers of wrongful convictions (National Registry of Exonerations, 2025), despite the extreme legal consequences of perjury. The problem of dissimulation is significant in other areas, as well; the majority of people polled by the Pew Research Center believe that government communications and business advertising are filled with deliberately misleading or false information (Pew Research Center, 2025). The Ubiquity of Falsehood Is Strange Granted, the liar may gain a short-term advantage in any given case, but once you’re exposed as a liar, future victims would have to be awfully dissociated, psychologically, to believe you any further. Lies are frequently detected, presumably to the disadvantage of the liars. Why are humans so ready to dissimulate? Falsehoods or the equivalent are ubiquitous in the natural world. For creatures that live moment to moment, falsehoods may prove entirely advantageous; dissimulation may have no long-term consequences, especially if those creatures and their conspecifics possess shorter or less sophisticated memories than their human counterparts. For example, …

The Agency’s Jodie Turner-Smith teases consequences for Samia, Martian

The Agency’s Jodie Turner-Smith teases consequences for Samia, Martian

Published by Daniella Wilson

The first season of The Agency ended on a dramatic cliffhanger, with Jodie Turner-Smith’s Samia headed back to Sudan and Michael Fassbender’s Martian being forced to become a double agent for British intelligence. Now, Turner-Smith has spoken with Radio Times exclusively to tease what we can expect in season 2 – and it seems that consequences are on the cards. “When we left her at the end of the season, she was going back to Sudan, and we were unsure of her fate, but we pretty much knew what maybe would happen,” Turner-Smith said of where we pick up with Samia at the start of the season 2. “And we do find her at the beginning of the season, she is in RSF [Rapid Support Forces] detention, paying for the crime of having fallen in love with the wrong person.” When asked what fans can expect from season 2 and how it will be different to the show’s first outing, Turner-Smith said: “I think that we’re really going to see the characters live these consequences …

Most Parents Phub Sometimes – But Habitual Phubbing Has Consequences

Most Parents Phub Sometimes – But Habitual Phubbing Has Consequences

Published by Sam Flores

!function(n){if(!window.cnx){window.cnx={},window.cnx.cmd=[];var t=n.createElement(‘iframe’);t.display=’none’,t.onload=function(){var n=t.contentWindow.document,c=n.createElement(‘script’);c.src=”//cd.connatix.com/connatix.player.js”,c.setAttribute(‘async’,’1′),c.setAttribute(‘type’,’text/javascript’),n.body.appendChild(c)},n.head.appendChild(t)}}(document);(new Image()).src=”https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=8b034f64-513c-4987-b16f-42d6008f7feb”;cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({“playerId”:”8b034f64-513c-4987-b16f-42d6008f7feb”,”mediaId”:”bea94644-cb73-4be5-8b8a-0007f15b0b08″}).render(“6a0c3473e4b02ed8893ef57f”);}); We’ve all been there: you’re doing a food shop on your phone or pinging an email to a colleague, and your child asks you something. You’re so engrossed that you don’t really hear them. Then you look up and see your kid just standing there, looking at you and your phone. You have no idea what they’ve said.  If you haven’t phubbed – that’s a portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbed” – your kids, you’re probably in the minority.  One survey found 62% of people reported looking at their phone while having a face-to-face conversation with someone else. Partners, friends and siblings were most likely to be phubbed, followed by children.  Psychotherapist Anna Mathur tells HuffPost UK that the act of phubbing is “extremely common” – we’re living in an age where our phones are designed to demand our attention, she says, “and most parents are also trying to stay on top of work, admin and the relentless scroll of modern life”. “Phubbing is rarely a sign that a parent doesn’t care. …

The Causes and Consequences of Narcissistic Leadership

The Causes and Consequences of Narcissistic Leadership

Published by Jenni Sidey

Narcissism has travelled a long intellectual journey. Its origins lie in the Greek myth of Narcissus, the beautiful young man who fell in love with his own reflection, unable to detach himself from the image staring back. Centuries later, Sigmund Freud repurposed the concept into a psychological framework, arguing that narcissism was not merely vanity but a fundamental component of human development. For Freud, a certain degree of self-love was not pathological but necessary; without it, individuals would lack the confidence and agency to function in the world. Today, narcissism retains a largely negative reputation, often associated with arrogance, entitlement, and a lack of empathy. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, it is also consistently linked to leadership. This tension raises an uncomfortable question: If narcissism is so problematic, why does it seem so common among those who lead? Footnotes to Freud Freud offered an early clue. He argued that our connection to leaders is, at its core, narcissistic. We project our own self-love onto them, particularly when they appear to admire or validate us in return. Charismatic …

The Harmful Consequences of Emotional Avoidance

The Harmful Consequences of Emotional Avoidance

Published by Jenni Sidey

To some extent, most of us have learned to avoid fully experiencing and embracing negative emotions such as sadness, grief, loss, anxiety, and shame. At times, we may similarly try to ignore positive emotions–especially if they are associated with feeling vulnerable or anxious. Anna Freud identified some key “defenses,” strategies practiced in an effort to support emotional avoidance. These include “suppression,” “projection,” “denial,” and others. Each of these defenses is a kind of mental sleight of hand whereby we avoid experiencing the raw, painful sting associated with our emotions. When we suppress our emotions, we may have a momentary awareness of them but quickly bury them as we redirect our attention elsewhere. When we engage in projection, we attribute to others feelings that we have evaded. For example, suppressed or denied anger may be expressed as, “I’m not angry; you’re the one who is angry.” Denial, considered developmentally a more primitive defense, entails denying reality. A child with chocolate icing on his face may simply deny that he touched the cake on the counter. Defenses …

Is the AI bubble about to burst? If so the consequences could be dire | Science, Climate & Tech News

Is the AI bubble about to burst? If so the consequences could be dire | Science, Climate & Tech News

Published by Miika Tikkanen

The market seems to be content, for now at least, to keep betting big on AI. While the value of some companies integral to the AI boom like Nvidia, Oracle and Coreweave have seen their value fall since the highs of mid-2025, the US stockmarket remains dominated by investment in AI. Of the S&P500 index of leading companies, 75% of returns are thanks to 41 AI stocks. The “magnificent seven” of big tech companies, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple and Tesla, account for 37% of the S&P’s performance. Such dominance, based almost exclusively on building one kind of AI – Large Language Models – is sustaining fears of an AI bubble. Nonsense, according to the AI titans. “We are long, long away from that,” Jensen Huang, CEO of AI chip-maker Nvidia and the world’s first $5trn company, told Sky News last month. Not everyone shares that confidence. Image: Huang speaking to Sky News last month Too much confidence in one way of making AI, which so far hasn’t delivered profits anywhere close to the …