The start of a new year often brings the hope that the coming year might be better than the last.  As the Editors of Character and Context, we firmly believe that a better understanding of people—both other people and ourselves—can improve the quality of the coming year.

After all, most of the things that make us unhappy and dissatisfied—within ourselves, in our relationships with others, and within society—are caused by people. Granted, a few problems don’t require human collusion (tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods come to mind), but most do.  Human behavior is by far the single largest cause of most of the struggles that we experience in life. Most problems are people problems, and the people who cause our problems are quite often us.

Character and Context may not transform your life.  But each article, written by behavioral scientists who study personality and social behavior in great depth, provides new information and insights that will make you savvier about human behavior.  And, now and then, an article might provide the nugget of knowledge that helps you navigate the complexities of social life or handle your personal problems more effectively.  And, even when this doesn’t happen, we guarantee that understanding more and more about human behavior will make life more interesting.

We hope you will revisit our site regularly in 2020 (we post a new blog every business day), and we wish you a very happy New Year.