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Author

Alina Petrova

Editor-in-chief

Alina Petrova is a Year 12 student preparing to apply to university, and the founder and editor of The Unreasonable Human. She reads across psychology, economics, behavioural science and neuroscience, and writes about the gap between how people are supposed to decide and how they actually do.

Why she started the journal

Writing by Alina Petrova

Restraint, by the numbers

It looks like a flaw in the person. Mostly it is a feature of the situation.

13 Jul 20256 min read

In praise of gossip

Not every irrational act is a mistake. Some are the point.

11 Jul 20259 min read

What the group chat teaches us about generosity

The story we tell afterwards is tidier than the choice we made at the time.

7 Jul 20257 min read

Pale pink blossom on thin branches in front of a raw concrete wall

The Small Thoughts

The story we tell afterwards is tidier than the choice we made at the time.

29 Jun 20257 min read

A lone figure climbing a pale stone staircase towards an arched window filled with light

Attention is a borrowed habit

Most advice assumes a person who never existed.

29 Jun 20256 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

In praise of the late fee

The cost is obvious, the benefit is diffuse, and so the benefit loses.

22 Jun 202512 min read

A lone figure climbing a pale stone staircase towards an arched window filled with light

Expertise is a social kind of hope

What feels like a preference is often just a default nobody questioned.

15 Jun 20258 min read

Illustration of a bare tree over a faint grid, overlaid with rust-red, pale blue and black-spotted circles

The case against the polite refusal

Not every irrational act is a mistake. Some are the point.

8 Jun 202513 min read

Patient Ledger

A small decision, repeated daily, is a life. Nobody designs it that way.

6 Jun 20256 min read

Illustration of a bare tree over a faint grid, overlaid with rust-red, pale blue and black-spotted circles

In praise of a good excuse

We are far better at explaining our choices than at making them.

3 Jun 20258 min read

Pale pink blossom on thin branches in front of a raw concrete wall

Why we mistake fluency for truth

The story we tell afterwards is tidier than the choice we made at the time.

27 May 20256 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

Reason, by the numbers

Before we try to fix people, it is worth understanding what they are for.

21 May 20256 min read

Pale pink blossom on thin branches in front of a raw concrete wall