Jessica Love

Jessica Love holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology and edits Kellogg Insight at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Anatomy of a Collision

The sudden intersection of one’s professional and parental identities can lead to a strange kind of work-life imbalance

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 22, 2022

Zugzwang in the New Year

You can’t win—should you even try?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 09, 2014

Can Reading Be Unlearned?

Researchers have looked somewhere surprising for answers—hypnosis

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 10, 2013

Babies Bamboozled by Numbers

What’s so hard about four?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 13, 2012

Dr. Doolittle Calling

Do nonhuman animals have grammar?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 21, 2013

We Need to Chat

How technology has changed the way we relate to one another

by Jessica Love | Monday, September 07, 2015

When the Upshot Is a Downer

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 08, 2011

Golfers, Toothpaste, and How Not to Overthink

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 12, 2012

Language Finds a Way

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 21, 2012

When the Mind Wanders, the Eyes Stay the Course

Try not to zone out while you read this post

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 23, 2012

Acting Like a Baby

Why is it so hard to hear non-native sounds?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 08, 2012

Derailed By “Who’s On First”

On committing to the wrong thing

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 06, 2012

What Toddlers Know They Don’t Know About Plurals

Fifty years later, the Wug Test is still teaching us how children learn new word forms

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 13, 2012

Your Baby Is a Statistician

What does an 11-month-old understand about random sampling?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 03, 2013

I Say Shutout, You Say Clean Sheet

What happens to our speech when we watch international soccer

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 12, 2014

This Column Needs Edited

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 01, 2011

Tyler Is Setting Up a Tent

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 15, 2011

Parse This

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Elephant in the Room

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 29, 2011

The Lion, the Yurt, and the Xbox

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 06, 2011

Aliens in the Mind

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 13, 2011

Nailing It

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 20, 2011

Speech in Action

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 27, 2011

If It Talks Like the Truth

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 03, 2011

The Accented Among Us

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Magazine Ran with Ink and Columns

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 17, 2011

Nullified

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 24, 2011

A Cocktail Conundrum

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 01, 2011

The Grammarian Was a He

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Spaghetti with a Dark Past

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 08, 2011

And I’m Like, Read This!

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 22, 2011

When Characters Speak Off the Page

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 29, 2011

When Rosemary Should Be Rosy and Merry

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 05, 2012

Spelling and the Mind

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 12, 2012

When Words Are Neighbors

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 19, 2012

What Actually Works

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 26, 2012

isthistytelhardtoreed

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 02, 2012

Submissive Sentences

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 09, 2012

Should Two Constructions Diverge

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 16, 2012

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sentence

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 23, 2012

What Prestige Sounds Like

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 01, 2012

Oprah: 2, Attenborough: 0

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 08, 2012

On Caddy-corner ... Or Whatever That Word Is

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Mind Paused / Not at All

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 22, 2012

Calling All Psychonarratologists

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 29, 2012

Is the Future of English Bad Science?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 05, 2012

Nounsy Nouns and Verbsy Verbs and Little Wugs Eat Ivy

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 19, 2012

These Thoughts Were Made in American English

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 26, 2012

Does Language Change How We Experience Color?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 03, 2012

Extreme Empathy

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 10, 2012

Rules Versus Rules: What The New Yorker Got Wrong

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 17, 2012

On Drunk Speech

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 24, 2012

When I See a Monkey Read

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 31, 2012

Give Ishmael a Break

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 07, 2012

Survival of the Thriftiest

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 14, 2012

Dude Sounds Like a Lady

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Art of Word Learning

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 05, 2012

On Word Learning, Incidentally

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 12, 2012

Little Scribes

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 19, 2012

So Totally On My Mind

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 26, 2012

American Culture Makes Us Egocentric—Maybe

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 02, 2012

How We Talk to Babies

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 09, 2012

Pilloried Prepositions

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 16, 2012

Changing the World, If Only in Our Minds

How we describe what isn't around us

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 30, 2012

On the Psychology of Swearing

Could cursing be good for us?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 06, 2012

A Language Without Exact Numbers

The curious case of Pirahã

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 20, 2012

What Little Girls Are Made Of

Sugar and spice and linguistic precocity

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 27, 2012

When Foreign Words and Native Accents Meet

The politics of saying it right

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 04, 2012

Big Toddler, Teeny Slide

Playtime gets curiouser and curiouser …

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 11, 2012

Your Brain On Risk

The neuroscience of world domination; or, what happens when bad science meets bad writing

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 18, 2012

Much Ado About Acting

On learning lines

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Psychology of Playing the Part

What makes an actor?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 01, 2012

Psychology and the Elite College Undergraduate

The world is theirs; but are they the world?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Liberal Grammar Fanatic

Why do grammatical errors turn Jekylls into Hydes?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 29, 2012

Why We Know So Little About High Achievers

Inquiring minds want to know—just not scientists

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 20, 2012

Demons Where Once There Were None

Exploring the darker powers of suggestion

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 17, 2013

What Your Child Watches When She Watches TV

2-D learning about a 3-D world

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 24, 2013

Of Mutant Mice—and Men

What can rodents tell us about language learning?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 31, 2013

Aquatic Cognition

Small aquatic creatures learn (and forget) to live another day

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 07, 2013

Ye Olde Blogge Postte

An ironic phrase with an ironic past

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Allure of the Counterintuitive

It’s not enough for social science to inform: it must surprise

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Allure of the Intuitive

What happens when we no longer understand our own minds?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 07, 2013

My Feeling for 11 Is Almost One of Pity

A new study argues that some synesthetic associations may be learned

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 14, 2013

Kiki or Bouba?

A short test with a complicated answer key

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 21, 2013

Hardwired for Talk?

There’s a problem: languages change really fast

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 28, 2013

The Internet Remembers

Sometimes entire populations behave a lot like individuals

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 04, 2013

CAPTCHA That Bot!

Behind the distorted text that decides: human or not?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 11, 2013

Time Traveling Through a Sentence

To understand language we relive the past and predict the future

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 18, 2013

Magic Fingers

Do baby sign language courses really work?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 25, 2013

Where’s the “The”?

Do babies mistake function words for object labels?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 02, 2013

N. K. Y. S. A.

(Nobody knows your stupid acronym)

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 09, 2013

A Mind to Navigate

An evolutionary story for a visional illusion

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 16, 2013

No English, No Career?

The new lingua franca of science

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 23, 2013

Friends Don’t Let Friends Listen and Drive

Is it dangerous to drive under the influence of … language?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 30, 2013

Tell the Riddle Right

Subtle linguistic manipulations can change how we interpret questions

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 06, 2013

Search: A Primer for the Rest of Us

Search engines are the ultimate gatekeepers. How do they work?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 13, 2013

A Dog With Two Names?

For bilingual babies, words don’t come with the same assumptions

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 20, 2013

Well, Hey There, Search

Soon we may query search engines as naturally as we query each other

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 27, 2013

Picturing a Whole New Language

Could images be the new words?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 11, 2013

Language in an Age of Seamlessness

What happens to conversation when everyone’s using a different device?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 18, 2013

On Zombie Eating

Nom nom nom

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 25, 2013

Freshman, Meet Your Roommates

Prepare to share toothpaste—and dialects

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 01, 2013

The Internet is a James Joyce Novel

On the playful language of image macros

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 08, 2013

When Babies Bang

A new study says the ruckus readies us for tool use

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 15, 2013

Are You Smarter Than My Cat?

On animal IQ tests

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 22, 2013

Tuesdays with Siri

On talking to computers

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 29, 2013

Y’all Look Different From Up Here

On the surprising link between face recognition and learning to sit

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 05, 2013

Sharing Or Oversharing Online?

These days, who’s to say what the difference is?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 12, 2013

When Tech Turns Nouns Into Smarter Nouns

How might an influx of smart gadgets change the English language?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 19, 2013

What makes Hemingway Hemingway?

On the psychology of artistic style

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Rules of Pleasant Conversation

How do we know when to chime in?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 03, 2013

Common Ground in Video Games

What can we expect from NPCs?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 10, 2013

Limericks That Leave You Hanging

When we expect to hear a rhyme and don’t

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 17, 2013

On Expecting Things to Fall Apart

We understand entropy surprisingly early in life

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 24, 2013

Quick: What’s the Past Tense of “Pet”?

On regular and irregular verbs

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 31, 2013

Headless Bear Walks Up to Woman; Awesomeness Ensues

The search for the perfect title

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 07, 2013

Compendiums of Everything

A brief history of the modern encyclopedia

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 14, 2013

Much Reading. Wow.

On the delicate dance between humor and inscrutability

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 21, 2013

The Disappearing Accent

For a while, youngsters stop noticing differences between dialects

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 05, 2013

The Search for Meaning in Sound

On kerfuffles and hullabaloos and rethinking iconicity

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 12, 2013

The Powerless I

Can pronouns carry social meaning?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 19, 2013

Spanish in the City

What’s behind an ongoing change to the Spanish spoken by New Yorkers?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 02, 2014

Why So Few English Words for Odors?

Another language shows it doesn’t have to be so

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 16, 2014

What Does the Owlet Say?

On the competitive squabbles of barn owl siblings

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 23, 2014

“You’re Saying It Wrong”

Why the Pledge of Allegiance may have some soul-searching to do

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 30, 2014

What We Don’t Read When We Read

On the words and letters we miss

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 06, 2014

Are Our Screams, Sighs, and Giggles Universal?

Two studies suggest yes and no

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 13, 2014

Emergencies in Spanish

When emergency calls and miscommunications collide

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 20, 2014

Labels for People

Language encourages children to categorize by gender and race

by Jessica Love | Thursday, February 27, 2014

What Jorge Luis Borges Knew About Knowing

Of Memory and Forgetting

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 06, 2014

Think Like a Bilingual

Is it ever too late to benefit from a second language?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 13, 2014

Here, There Be Ambiguity (a Webcomic)

On contrastive reduplication

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 20, 2014

How to Talk Shakespeare

A primer

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 27, 2014

Sneak Attacks (A Webcomic)

What’s that word again?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 03, 2014

A Reader’s Guide to Ha Ha (A Webcomic)

On the many strange spellings of a very strange word

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 10, 2014

Wave Your Hands and Say It Right

On the surprising relationship between gestures and memory

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 17, 2014

Don’t Mock the Monocle (A Webcomic)

On our unspoken preferences for ordering adjectives

by Jessica Love | Thursday, April 24, 2014

Leave Your Laptop Home

Taking notes? There’s a memory advantage to using pen and paper

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 01, 2014

How Many Words Does a Wordsmith Make?

On Aesop Rock, DMX, and the importance of a large vocabulary

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 08, 2014

Out of Office (A Webcomic)

The vacation message reimagined

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 15, 2014

When Nouns Verb Oddly

Verb meanings are slipperier than noun meanings

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 22, 2014

Who’s John Again?

On novels and names

by Jessica Love | Thursday, May 29, 2014

Not Enough Brain (A Webcomic)

On the persistence of a myth

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 05, 2014

Anthropomorphic Trees (Webcomic #7)

What’s that book teaching your child?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 19, 2014

The Power of Um

On putting speech disfluencies to work

by Jessica Love | Thursday, June 26, 2014

Ethics Across Borders

On shifting values and Facebook’s big misstep

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 03, 2014

Describing a Visual World Without Vision

On blindness and language

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 10, 2014

Nap Your Way to a Bigger Vocabulary?

On word learning and sleep

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 17, 2014

As an Aside (Webcomic #8)

On processing parentheticals

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 24, 2014

For to Sound Folksy

What do we know about this odd, antiquated construction?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, July 31, 2014

Depends on How You Tell It

On the psychology of narrative style

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 07, 2014

All Eyes on the Eyes

On the many powers of visual contact

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 14, 2014

Perfect Memory (Webcomic #9)

On remembering and misremembering

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 21, 2014

Reading Humans

One way dogs really are better than cats

by Jessica Love | Thursday, August 28, 2014

English vs. English

On the concrete and the abstract, the Germanic and the Latinate

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 04, 2014

Wounded By Books

Brits of an earlier age read at their own risk

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 11, 2014

Solidarity in Confusion

What we convey when we converse

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 18, 2014

Baby Got Rhythm?

Keep the beat and improve your language skills

by Jessica Love | Thursday, September 25, 2014

A Modest Proposal and a Goodbye

On improving science coverage, and finding the good stuff already out there

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 02, 2014

The Disappearing Accent

For a while, youngsters stop noticing differences between dialects

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 09, 2014

Are You Smarter Than My Cat?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 16, 2014

Zugzwang in the New Year

You can’t win—should you even try?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 23, 2014

Don’t Mock the Monocle (A Webcomic)

On our unspoken preferences for ordering adjectives

by Jessica Love | Thursday, October 30, 2014

Are Our Screams, Sighs, and Giggles Universal?

Two studies suggest yes and no

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 06, 2014

When Nouns Verb Oddly

Verb meanings are slipperier than noun meanings

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 13, 2014

Headless Bear Walks Up to Woman; Awesomeness Ensues

The search for the perfect title

by Jessica Love | Thursday, November 20, 2014

How to Talk Shakespeare

by Jessica Love | Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Tuesdays with Siri

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 11, 2014

Limericks That Leave You Hanging

When we expect to hear a rhyme and don’t

by Jessica Love | Thursday, December 18, 2014

On Expecting Things to Fall Apart

We understand entropy surprisingly early in life

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 08, 2015

What Makes Hemingway Hemingway?

On the psychology of artistic style

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 15, 2015

Magic Fingers

Do baby sign language courses really work?

by Jessica Love | Thursday, January 22, 2015

They Get to Me

A young psycholinguist confesses her strong attraction to pronouns

by Jessica Love | Monday, March 01, 2010

Reading Fast and Slow

The speed at which our eyes travel across the printed page has serious (and surprising) implications for the way we make sense of words

by Jessica Love | Thursday, March 01, 2012

The Grammarian Was a He

by Jessica Love | Wednesday, November 30, 2011