Understanding convictions, your own included

Two people can want the same thing and separate because they do not want it at the same moment. It is one of the most frequent disagreements, and the worst formulated.

Should an elected representative do what those who elected them want, or what they judge to be right for them? Both answers have had staunch defenders for more than two centuries.

France adopted in 2024 a law on children's image rights. It writes into law a tension between two parental prerogatives.

Many people occupy a different position from their parents. A large share of those movements says nothing about how open the society is.

The share of single-person households has doubled in half a century in rich countries. Its association with measured isolation is weaker than assumed.

The formula is a judgement disguised as an observation. What it designates covers at least three different things, two of which are not quantities.

The one who shuts down in the middle of an argument looks like the calmer of the two. The physiological measurements say exactly the opposite.

We often feel we understand a public policy, until the moment we are asked to explain how it works. This gap has been measured, and it affects opinions themselves.

Associations between family meals and adolescent outcomes are numerous and positive. They probably measure something other than the meal.

Each organisation calculates its own in its own way. Comparing two rates published by different sources almost never makes sense.

Reporting few friends or saying one is lonely has a social cost. Methods that bypass that cost give noticeably different results.

Trauma, toxic, coercive control, mental load: terms from the clinic now circulate in ordinary conversation. The gain is real, and so is the cost.

A spouse who is sole owner cannot sell the family home without the other's agreement. This little-known rule is one of the most protective in family law, and it does not apply to everyone.

Perfectly consistent voters can produce a majority that is not. This two-century-old result still sheds light on the way collective decisions are made.

One does not randomly assign how an infant is fed. The rare designs that come close have greatly reduced the effects attributed.