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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

The weight of a debt

Owing money changes how people think, and not only about money.

4 Nov 20259 min read

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

The envy of the polite refusal

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

3 Nov 202512 min read

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

Measuring doubt, one lottery slip at a time

Most advice assumes a person who never existed.

2 Nov 202510 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

The Reluctant Neighbour

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

2 Nov 20258 min read

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

A short history of the rounding error

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

26 Oct 202512 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 to-do list

With Prof. Patrick Ferreira on whether certainty can be taught, bought or merely inherited, and what a more human economics would do about it.

25 Oct 20252 min read

Kindness is a public bargain

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

20 Oct 20258 min read

What the round number teaches us about generosity

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

11 Oct 202512 min read

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

Is memory overrated?

With Prof. Miriam Whitcombe on why status is so hard to measure and so easy to fake, and whether we should try to fix it.

11 Oct 20252 min read

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

Why we change our minds so rarely

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

7 Oct 202511 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

What wealth feels like

The number in the account and the feeling of security are only loosely related.

7 Oct 20258 min read

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

The Reasonable Argument

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

3 Oct 20255 min read

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