New Paper Out!📜 A slight departure from my usual stuff, but I’m super excited to announce that our paper “Euromaidan and Ukrainian Subjective Wellbeing” is officially out in the European Journal of Social Psychology! Open-access DOI: doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

Euromaidan and Ukrainian Subjective Well‐Being

The 2013–2014 Euromaidan in Ukraine was the largest series of pro-European protests in history. Peaceful civilian protests were met with state violence, resulting in widespread civil unrest, over 100...

doi.org

I wrote a piece with Nick Hobson in Harvard Business Review (@hbr.org) on how leaders can use empathy wisely to help their employees feel supported while benefitting their own well-being. Check it out and share let me know what you think. hbr.org/2026/01/five... #empathy #leadership

How Leaders Can Practice Wise Empathy

Empathy has become a baseline expectation of modern leadership, but practiced without judgment it can backfire, leaving leaders depleted and employees feeling misunderstood. Effective leadership requi...

hbr.org

Effort feels bad. We dodge it, minimize it, complain about it. But we also crave it. In our new paper, we revisit the effort paradox and show why the aversion and the attraction make sense. With @aidanvcampbell.bsky.social & @blairsaunders.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Effort paradox redux: Rethinking how effort shapes social behavior

Effort is a fundamental paradox in human behavior: while organisms typically avoid it as costly and aversive, effort is also valued and actively pursu…

sciencedirect.com

🎉 Our paper is now out in Communications Psychology! We explore how effortful leisure (like puzzling) can be a source of meaning in daily life. Across 5 studies (N = 2,569), we find: - Effort makes leisure feel more meaningful - But not necessarily less enjoyable 🧵 doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Effortful leisure is a source of meaning in everyday life - Communications Psychology

Five studies, including experiments and experience-sampling, show effortful leisure feels more meaningful than less effortful leisure while maintaining enjoyment. Results suggest effortful leisure can...

doi.org

Japan gets something we don't: the subway cleaner and burger cook aren't weird for caring so much about his work—they're practicing a philosophy of presence. Meanwhile we optimize everything into meaninglessness. New post! open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Why We Love Hard Work

In the busiest train station in the world, I stare at a man fully absorbed in his work: cleaning station walls.

open.substack.com

🚨New paper alert! 🚨 I've been fascinated by this contradiction for years: we hate exerting effort, yet we value things more when they're difficult to achieve. Is the effort paradox real, illusory, or adaptive? Have a read! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Effort paradox redux: Rethinking how effort shapes social behavior

Effort is a fundamental paradox in human behavior: while organisms typically avoid it as costly and aversive, effort is also valued and actively pursu…

sciencedirect.com

I confess: I spent decades selling a self-control narrative that was wrong. My latest post explains why willpower doesn't work the way we thought, and how we accidentally created a moral meritocracy around personality traits we don't choose. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

The Self-Control Industrial Complex

A Confession

open.substack.com

The Paradox of Hard Work: Why do people enjoy doing difficult things? www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

The Paradox of Hard Work

Why do people enjoy doing difficult things?

theatlantic.com

Received news that my paper with @minzlicht.bsky.social was accepted at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin🥳. In it, we examine how trait measures of empathy predict everyday state empathy, and what this teaches us about how we measure and experience empathy: osf.io/preprints/ps... #empathy

Does effort make life more meaningful? Was Sisyphus living the dream? In our new paper (now accepted in Cognition!), across 6 studies with nearly 3,000 participants, we found that more effortful tasks feel more meaningful 🧵