Are there simple, quick, and easy-to-learn habits that you can incorporate into your life to make yourself meaningfully happier? The ClearerThinking.org team recently explored this question by means of a longitudinal study. Our research led to the creation of Building Happiness Habits, a tool for improving daily mood with minimal effort. (If you've come here from the tool itself, welcome!)

In this post, we’ll go over the details of our study,...

Every day each of us makes judgments about the future in the face of uncertainty. These judgments can have a huge impact on our lives, so it’s really important that we make them as accurately as possible. But what can you do if you have limited information about the future? Well, the Open Philanthropy Project commissioned us to create a new web app that helps you practice making predictions, with the goal of honing your ability to make accur...

Truth and existence are surprisingly complex concepts. The closer you examine them, the more complex they reveal themselves to be. What do we really mean when we make a claim like “this painting is not art” or “everything is subjective”? What exactly do we mean when we say “the color red” exists or that numbers exist? Philosophical questions like these are notoriously difficult to pin down precisely. We want to make it easier.

With that in m...

Some people say you should "trust in your gut", while other people argue that analytic thinking is better. Who is right? To answer this question, ClearerThinking founder Spencer Greenberg recently gave a TEDx talk on the role of intuition in decision-making. If you want to find out when you should rely on instinct instead of reflection, check out the instructive video here!

The talk presents a new decision-making framework that can easil...

How much do you value credentials when judging the opinions of others? Do you give them too much deference – or too little? Measure the value you place on diplomas and degrees with this quick new quiz!

Whether a person has formal expert status in a field can be an important factor in how much we trust them, and what kinds of opinions we think it is appropriate for them to express. It's important to know how much evidence formal credentials pr...

To what extent are you a “skeptic” of information, and a “seeker” of new ideas? You can take our newly-launched mini-test to find out! Skeptical Seekers measures two personality traits which we think are really important for discovering true things about the world: “skepticism” and “seekingness”. Click here to take the test!

Having accurate beliefs requires a combination of skepticism in the face of new information, and seeking new perspectiv...

Enhancing your critical thinking can have a lot of benefits, including developing a clearer picture of reality, becoming a more informed citizen, and making better life decisions. We often hear about "critical thinking", but what is it, really, and how do you know if you’re practising it? This post will cover some of the key components of critical thinking for anyone who wants to improve their reasoning. 

We're also excited to announce that t...

Could the act of answering open-ended questions about yourself give you new, important insights? It turns out the answer is "yes", if those questions are selected in just the right way! See for yourself by trying Life-Changing Questions, our newly-launched free tool.

After running a series of five scientific studies, we've discovered a specific set of practical, yet rarely-asked questions that 83% of people reported were valuable for them to...

Do progressives and conservatives really have different intrinsic values? If so, in what ways? By surveying hundreds of people, we identified substantial differences between what each end of the political spectrum considers important in life – and detected some interesting patterns in what types of values each group tends to hold.

The ClearerThinking.org team is in the final stages of producing a test designed to help you identify your most i...

We just launched the Overconfidence Analyzer, a brand-new tool for evaluating your relative confidence at any skill! It was recently featured in the New York Times, and more than 6,000 users have already learned about overconfidence with its help. Click here to try it out!

Is your faith in your ability to write, play soccer, start a company, or manage money justified relative to others? Or are you comparatively overconfident in your capabilit...

Today we’re sharing with you what we think is one of the most fun ways to learn quickly about important topics like nuclear power, organic farming and drug legalization. Kurzgesagt, German for “In a Nutshell”, is a Munich-based YouTube channel that presents animated, educational content in an easy-to-digest and entertaining format. Their videos cover scientific concepts, philosophical theories, and topics of political debate. If you’re looki...

Nonviolent communication (NVC) is a popular method of conflict resolution that privileges unbiased evidence and specificity. While NVC is often used in relationship counselling and political negotiation, it is also a tool for thinking that may help improve the way you communicate, whether it be with family, friends, colleagues. This post teaches you the four steps of NVC so that you can use them in your own relationships. If you learn to use...

Most of us think we’re pretty good at forming accurate beliefs based on the evidence that is presented to us. In fact, in one study we ran we found that, on average, people viewed themselves as better than 70 out of 100 people of their demographic at “evaluating evidence reliability”. Now of course, only 30% of people can be in the top 30% at evaluating evidence, suggesting that most of us are overconfident in this capacity.

We think we can d...

Our development team is currently performing some research on happiness habits - simple actions you can take repeatedly throughout the day to help improve your mood, dispel stress, and take more satisfaction in life's little pleasures. 

We would be immensely grateful if you'd give us a hand in this research by joining our ongoing happiness habits study! The study is simple and easy to participate in. It'll assign you one of several evide...

Unsurprisingly, measuring the happiness of a nation – let alone an individual – is a difficult task. Most people would agree that happiness is an internal state, but whether it’s best to think of it as a single emotion, a collection of emotions, or a quality that certain people are disposed to is not obvious. The struggle with definition is one of many challenges that social science faces when trying to assess the extent to which a person is...