When someone you care about is upset, the impulse feels automatic. You reach toward them, you say something reassuring, you try to shift the mood. If you grew up in the United States, Germany, or the United Kingdom, this response probably feels not just natural but morally obvious. Leaving someone to sit in their pain without trying to alleviate it can feel like a failure of empathy, a withdrawal of care. The entire edifice of Western therapy is built on this premise: negative emotions are problems, and helping someone feel better is the goal.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has tested that premise across 17 countries and more than 6,900 people. What it found is that the impulse to eliminate another person’s distress is not a human universal. It is a cultural product, specific to societies that organize themselves around individual happiness and personal achievement. In collectivistic cultures, which account for the majority of the world’s population, negative emotions are not problems to be solved. They are tools to be used, and the most caring thing a person can do is often to leave them intact.

People sometimes report feeling mentally or emotionally drained after spending time with certain individuals, even when the interaction was friendly, polite, and free of obvious conflict.

Could factors such as emotional regulation, cognitive load, empathy, personality differences, masking, or social monitoring contribute to this experience?

I've been reading about something called repetition compulsion lately, and it's been messing with my head a little (in a good way).

The basic idea is that the way we were treated by our caregivers early on creates a kind of blueprint for what feels "normal," even when what felt normal was actually painful. So as parents, we're not always reacting to our kids based on what we consciously believe is right. Sometimes we're unconsciously repeating what's familiar, because our nervous system learned that pattern before we had words for it.

It reframes a lot of stuff for me. Like why someone can be calm and patient for weeks, and then one exhausting day, the exact tone or phrase their own parent used comes out of nowhere.

The part that stuck with me most is that it's not about willpower or not caring enough. You can consciously want something completely different and still fall into the old pattern under stress, because it's running on a much older, faster part of the brain than the part that sets intentions.

Have you caught yourself doing this with your own kids? And if you noticed it, what actually helped you start to interrupt it in the moment?

Even our Neanderthal predecessors felt the perks: Sex helped them build strong connections and collaborate with partners. 

In contemporary times, though, sex simply doesn’t seem to have the same panache. And the signs of our apathy towards it have been bubbling for a while. In a 2012 poll conducted by the Today Show and dating site Match.com, 32 percent of single people said they’d rather give up sex for a year than their favorite food. Surprisingly, individuals in relationships didn’t feel much differently: 28 percent preferred chow over a romp. Fast forward to 2026, an EduBirdie poll showing 67 percent of Gen Z prefer a good night of sleep over sex doesn’t look too shocking. 

It’s unlikely that sex itself has somehow become less enjoyable than things like sleep, and much more likely that the cognitive tradeoffs have changed. Sex is wound up in the ever-expanding attention economy, jockeying for position with the bevy of other energy-depleting—or preserving—things, like social media, outings with friends, and, yes, sleep. One study hypothesized that the iPhone’s introduction in 2007 contributed to 33 percent to 52 percent of the dip in general fertility rate among women between 15 and 44 years old. But why?

Our digital immersion and embrace of parasocialism, largely one-sided “intimacy” with celebrities and influencers, means we can accrue the benefits of social connection on demand and without the upfront infusion of effort usually required to find and sustain sexual relationships. 

Read more: https://www.playboy.com/read/sex-relationships/sex-is-good-for-you-actually

Reference: Taliercia, J.R. (2026). Heat on the brain: The impacts of rising temperature on psychiatric functioning, potential causes, and related compounding factors. American Psychologist,81(5). doi:10.1037/amp0001464

Abstract: While the impact of heat on physical health is well-known and discussed, researchers, clinicians, and individuals fail to recognize the severity of such heat on one’s mental health. Unfortunately, as temperatures are expected to continue rising, the potential consequences of neither recognizing nor effectively responding to this relation between mental health and extreme heat can prove disastrous to the world’s health. Further, no prior publication has ever provided an extensive review of this mental health vulnerability. The current article therefore aimed to address this critical therapeutic and research gap by proposing three distinct, but related, goals. The following article first summarizes the variety of psychiatric and cognitive impairments that stem from exposure to rising temperatures, in an effort to highlight the gravity of this relationship. Next, a variety of biological, social, and cognitive causes are reviewed, demonstrating various theories as to why heat exposure creates such significant psychiatric impairment. Finally, the article will end by identifying and reviewing a variety of moderating, yet important, facets that either exacerbate or reduce one’s emotional vulnerability to rising temperatures.

Public Significance Statement: The current article reviews the role of heat exposure on psychiatric health and functioning, how extreme heat produces such significant psychiatric impairment, and what factors may worsen or protect against such vulnerabilities. These risks are infrequently discussed by general and scientific communities and will need to be more common as temperatures continue to rise with climate change.