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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

Memory, by the numbers

The evidence is clear, the incentives are not, and the incentives usually win.

17 Dec 20258 min read

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

Fairness is a social bargain

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

11 Dec 20255 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

The trouble with the sunk cost

With Dr. Ruth Sato on what status does to markets, marriages and the morning commute, and what the data actually shows.

6 Dec 20252 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

Reason is a reasonable kind of courage

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

4 Dec 20256 min read

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

Ordinary Genius

Most advice assumes a person who never existed.

3 Dec 20257 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

Fair enough

People will pay to punish unfairness. Markets have never quite accepted this.

2 Dec 20257 min read

Luck is a borrowed bet on the future

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

28 Nov 202512 min read

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

The loyalty of the weather forecast

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

22 Nov 20257 min read

The trouble with the weather forecast

With Prof. Owen Oyelaran on the surprising economics of boredom, and what a more human economics would do about it.

22 Nov 20253 min read

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

Generosity is a public act of faith

Most advice assumes a person who never existed.

13 Nov 20259 min read

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

Doubt is a slow habit

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

10 Nov 202512 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

Is effort overrated?

With Dr. Patrick Faulkner on the surprising economics of patience, and what the data actually shows.

8 Nov 20252 min read

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