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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

Why we tip more at lunch

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

16 Jun 202611 min read

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

The trouble with the second helping

With Dr. Miriam Whitcombe on whether envy can be taught, bought or merely inherited, and whether we should try to fix it.

14 Jun 20262 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

Restraint is a expensive argument

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

9 Jun 202611 min read

The argumentative mind

Alone we are lazy thinkers. In disagreement we become sharp. That is not a bug.

9 Jun 20268 min read

The Quiet Hours

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

4 Jun 20266 min read

What the loyalty card teaches us about envy

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

1 Jun 202614 min read

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

Why we overestimate ourselves

With Dr. Kwame Whitcombe on whether nostalgia can be taught, bought or merely inherited, and why the textbook still gets it wrong.

31 May 20262 min read

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

The pride of the commute

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

27 May 20266 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

A short history of the honest mistake

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

20 May 202613 min read

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

The trouble with the group chat

With Prof. Idris Brenner on why patience is so hard to measure and so easy to fake, and whether we should try to fix it.

17 May 20262 min read

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

The shape of the deadline

The mind is built for a different world. It copes remarkably well with this one.

12 May 20269 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

What reason is for

We did not evolve to be right. We evolved to be convincing, and to be hard to convince.

12 May 20269 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall