Rebecca McInroy

A new study confirms that personality traits are associated with longevity, or lack thereof, but while behavior matters, there’s more to the story. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy look at why “everything in moderation, including moderation,” is still good advice.

McGeehan et al. (2026). “Personality and mortality risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal data.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41359557/

It seems that people today carry with them the constant mantra, “I’m so busy.” And as it can be tough to juggle work, kids, and life in general, a lot of that feeling of being overwhelmed may be our own fault.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markaman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the value of boredom and how to get the most out of your downtime to feel more in control and less stressed.

Why is it that we can feel a lot younger or older than we are? What does it mean to feel our age? In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore the psychology of how we perceive age.

When someone attacks your character, the urge to fire back is almost irresistible. But defending yourself in the heat of the moment often does more harm than good, so why do we do it? In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about the psychology of fighting back.

Any form of oration is communication, and that communication is often not just a one-way street. In our third episode in our Two Guys on Your Head series on oration, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy look at how oration can be a conversation, albeit a fraught one.

Graduation season brings a flood of commencement speeches, but most fall flat. In this episode of our Two Guys on Your Head series on oration, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy offer some practical tips on how to be an effective orator. 

If we can learn a language in our infancy, why is it so difficult to learn a second language later in life? On this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore how we learn language.

Have you ever traveled to a new place and suddenly, randomly, you experience this overwhelming sense of familiarity with what you’re seeing, like you’ve already seen it, even though you know you haven’t because you’ve never been there before? We call this phenomenon Déjà vu. On this episode of Two Guys on Your Head Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore the psychology behind why it happens.

It’s graduation season, and that comes with a lot of joy, tears, expectations, and relief. But it turns out, as Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore in this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, graduation is about a lot more than a diploma.

Art explains the intro clip in the Easter Egg episode.

When we discover a hidden secret in a song, a movie, or a book, we can feel a sense of joy and connection. Those little gems are referred to as “easter eggs,” and we look for them because we’re curious. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about the psychology of nurturing that sense of discovery and why it’s important.

We’ve all felt a little spark of satisfaction when someone who wronged us stumbles, or when a rival fails. That feeling has a name: schadenfreude, a German word for the pleasure derived from witnessing the troubles or humiliation of others. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore why we experience an emotion most of us would rather not admit to. The surprising answer? Despite our discomfort with it, schadenfreude actually serves a useful purpose.

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Eskreis-Winkler and colleagues describe what they call “the failure gap” — the consistent finding that outside observers dramatically overestimate how often people succeed after failing. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy discuss the takeaways from learning more about failure.

Reference: Eskreis-Winkler, L., Woolley, K., Kim, M., & Polimeni, E. (in press). The failure gap. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Preprint available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=5407064

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Eskreis-Winkler and colleagues describe what they call “the failure gap” — the consistent finding that outside observers dramatically overestimate how often people succeed after failing. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, describes the study and implications of the results with Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy.

Reference: Eskreis-Winkler, L., Woolley, K., Kim, M., & Polimeni, E. (in press). The failure gap. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Preprint available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=5407064

One of the greatest features of our brains is that we can forget things, but why is it so difficult to forget some things but not others? It turns out, our brains absorb information before we ever get a chance to evaluate it — and once something is in there, there’s no delete key. In the episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore the psychology of memory.

Ever caught yourself saying “I’m reading a great book” only to awkwardly correct yourself with “…well, actually I’m listening to it”? That guilty pause says a lot. But you have nothing to feel bad about. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy break down how your brain processes reading versus listening, and the science might surprise you.

Dignity is core to our humanity and woven into our sense of agency, authenticity, and the way others treat us, yet what it looks and feels like shifts across cultures, circumstances, and relationships. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy explore the psychology behind this deeply human need.

People high in the Big Five personality trait of neuroticism generally experience more negative than positive feelings each day. In this final episode of our three-part series on the psychology of neuroticism from Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about the psychology of support.

Big Five Personality Test

References

Wenzel, M., Kaurin, A., Ringwald, W. R., Tüscher, O., Kubiak, T., & Wright, A. G. C. (2026). Unraveling the link between neuroticism and well-being in daily life: The role of event occurrence, event appraisals, affective reactivity, and affective recovery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 130(1), 93–108.

People high in the Big Five personality trait of neuroticism generally experience more negative than positive feelings each day. In this second episode of our three-part series on the psychology of neuroticism from Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy talk about the impact of social media, the benefit of reflecting on how you’re feeling, and why you might want to know where you rank on the Big Five.

Big Five Personality Test

References

Wenzel, M., Kaurin, A., Ringwald, W. R., Tüscher, O., Kubiak, T., & Wright, A. G. C. (2026). Unraveling the link between neuroticism and well-being in daily life: The role of event occurrence, event appraisals, affective reactivity, and affective recovery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 130(1), 93–108.

People high in the Big Five personality trait of neuroticism generally experience more negative feelings and fewer positive feelings each day. In this first episode of a three-part series on the psychology of neuroticism from Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy discuss some new research that explores a key question: Why does this happen?

References

Wenzel, M., Kaurin, A., Ringwald, W. R., Tüscher, O., Kubiak, T., & Wright, A. G. C. (2026). Unraveling the link between neuroticism and well-being in daily life: The role of event occurrence, event appraisals, affective reactivity, and affective recovery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 130(1), 93–108.