In The Empire Strikes Back, when Yoda is training Luke to be a Jedi, he demonstrates the power of the Force by raising an X-wing fighter from a swamp. Luke mutters, "I don't believe it." Yoda replies, "That is why you fail."

As usual, Yoda was right - and science backs him up. Numerous studies have proved that confidence is the real key to success.

Studies exploring the performance gap between men and women in math and spatial skills have found that confidence plays a huge role. Women who were asked to identify their gender before taking a spatial skills test performed more poorly than those who weren't. Women also performed better when they were told to envision themselves as men, and both genders performed better when they were told that their gender is better at the task.

There is a common perception that children are more likely to read if it is on a device such as an iPad or Kindles. But new research shows that this is not necessarily the case.

In a study of children in Year 4 and 6, those who had regular access to devices with eReading capability (such as Kindles, iPads and mobile phones) did not tend to use their devices for reading - and this was the case even when they were daily book readers.

Research also found that the more devices a child had access to, the less they read in general.

It suggests that providing children with eReading devices can actually inhibit their reading, and that paper books are often still preferred by young people.

These findings match previous research which looked at how teenagers prefer to read. This research found that while some students enjoyed reading books on devices, the majority of students with access to these technologies did not use them regularly for this purpose. Importantly, the most avid book readers did not frequently read books on screens.

Envy: An emotion which "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it"

Many narcissist do not feel much envy, research finds. This is because grandiose narcissists have an inflated sense of superiority.

Dr Zlatan Krizan, the study's lead author, said:

"They really buy into their own fantasy.

If you think you're the greatest, it makes sense that you wouldn't envy others because everybody is beneath you, so there's nothing to envy.

It's really the vulnerability that predicts envy and it predicts it very, very strongly."

The conclusion comes from a survey of over 350 people asked about their feelings of envy, self-esteem, anxiety and depression.

Loneliness can reliably be linked to a significant increase in the risk of early mortality, according to a study at Brigham Young University. Head author, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, notes that "substantial evidence now indicates that individuals lacking social connections (both objective and subjective social isolation) are at risk for premature mortality."

Holt-Lunstad believes the risks associated with loneliness are already greater than such established dangers as obesity:

Several decades ago scientists who observed widespread dietary and behavior changes raised warnings about obesity and related health problems. The present obesity epidemic had been predicted. Obesity now receives constant coverage in the media and in public health policy. The current status of research on the risks of loneliness and social isolation is similar to that of research on obesity 3 decades ago... Current evidence indicates that heightened risk for mortality from a lack of social relationships is greater than that from obesity.

Furthermore, she warns that "researchers have predicted that loneliness will reach epidemic proportions by 2030 unless action is taken."

Although radically different in terms of their content and feel, the range of dream states are just as complex as waking states. If we look across an individual's lifetime, we find that children's dreams are very different from adults' dreams. Children tend to dream of emotional interactions with family members, friends and scary animals, while adults dream of other adults. Dreams of young adults are filled with social interactions between the dreamer and current friends and significant others. Men's dreams differ substantially from women's dreams, with women dreaming equally often of men and women, and men dreaming more often about other men. Older adults tend to dream more about creative works, legacies and enduring concerns, while the dreams of dying people are filled with numbers of supernatural agents, other-worldly settings and images of reunions with a loved one who has died. Dreams that transport the child into the social world of his caretakers during early life gently escort the dreamer into the arms of his loved ones when life is nearing an end. Dreams accompany us literally from the cradle to the grave.

The disorder affects between 1 and 6% of the population.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder experience very stormy emotions, commit self-destructive acts and are sometimes aggressive.

Often considered the most severe personality disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder is linked to a long history of instability in personal relationships.

The personality disorder causes very strong mood swings as a result of brain abnormalities in two key regions, according to a host of neuroscience studies.

Stoicism emerged as a philosophy, a way of life - similar to a religion, really - most famously in ancient Rome somewhere around 50-100 AD (even though it was Greeks who pioneered the thinking).

Two millennia later, the philosophy is enjoying a revival of sorts, and it's not hard to understand why.

The primary goal of ancient Stoicism was to figure out the best way to live; as modern philosopher Lawrence Becker writes: "Its central, organizing concern is about what one ought to do or be to live well - to flourish." And this question of how to live is perhaps humanity's most enduring - becoming especially acute in ages in which a sense of shared meaning has atrophied and every individual is left to find meaning on his own. Stoicism's answers, its fundamental tenets - what many modern writers and thinkers have deemed the "art of living" - thus feel just as relevant now as they did a couple thousand years ago.

While we've covered some tenets of Stoicism on the Art of Manliness before (and given an introduction to it in a podcast interview), we've never laid out its more concrete practices - the tactics that lead both to personal joy and the betterment of society. It's my aim to present five ways you can start to inject Stoicism into your life today, and begin experiencing more happiness and fulfillment.

What happens to the minds of children who are exposed to television?

This is an important question to answer because children between the ages of 2-11 watch an average of over 25 hours of television per week. That's a part-time job. And TV is basically an electronic babysitter due to its pacifying effect. What's really going on?

And is it possible for "educational" technology to inappropriately stimulate and harm the developing child's brain?

"...this is important because we're technologizing childhood today in a way that is previously unprecedented." - Dimitri Christakis

Forty years ago, children began watching some television at age four (like the soothing Mr. Rogers).

Now they start big screen time as infants with rapid, high stimulation (like Baby Einstein and Powerpuff Girls).

It's time to address an epidemic in the United States. It's one that could be deadly, particularly to liberty.

It's an epidemic of Dunning-Kruger. It's why ignorant people are so certain that they're right.

What's that, you ask?

The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which individuals, who are unskilled at a particular task, believe themselves to possess above-average ability in performing the task. On the other hand, as individuals become more skilled in a particular task, they may mistakenly believe that they possess below-average ability in performing those tasks because they may assume that all others possess equal or greater ability. In other words, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others." (source)

And haven't we all seen that lately? Let's look at a recent example right here in the good ole USA.

Ignoring someone in a social situation to look at a phone threatens people's fundamental need to belong, new research finds.

It is a form of social exclusion, making others feel invisible and eroding their self-esteem.

'Phubbing', short for phone snubbing, was linked to poorer communication and lower relationship satisfaction, the study found.

Examples of phubbing include:

• Placing the cellphone where it can be seen during a social interaction.
• Keeping the cellphone in the hand.
• Glancing at the cellphone while talking.
• Checking the cellphone during a lull in the conversation.