Did you know 😏
He rubbed lemon juice on his face. Robbed two banks. Smiled at the cameras. Got caught in an hour. And changed psychology forever.
In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two banks in Pittsburgh and robbed them with no mask, no disguise, and lemon juice on his face. He believed that because lemon juice works as invisible ink on paper, it would make his face invisible to cameras. He smiled directly into the security cameras. Police aired the footage on the evening news and arrested him within an hour.
When shown the tape, Wheeler stared at the screen and said, "But I wore the juice." He had tested the theory with a Polaroid selfie and didn't appear in the photo — because lemon juice got in his eyes and he aimed the camera at the ceiling.
His case inspired Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to publish their 1999 paper defining the Dunning-Kruger Effect — the cognitive bias where people with low ability drastically overestimate their own competence.
Imgine being this loved 😭🥹
A couple appeared to turn an ordinary picnic into a small birthday celebration for their dog, sitting him between them on a blanket in the park while he wore a striped shirt and a tiny party hat like the guest of honor.
The actual research is wild. Every time you push down a feeling, your brain has to choose between suppressing that emotion and recording what’s happening around you. It picks the suppression. The memory doesn’t get saved.
A 2000 Stanford study confirmed this: people told to hide their emotions while watching a film remembered far fewer details than people who just reacted naturally. Suppressing emotions uses up mental energy, and that leaves less brain power for saving new memories.
Brain scans show why. A 2012 study found that suppression quiets the hippocampus (your brain’s memory-recording center) right when it should be saving information. The two brain regions that normally team up to lock in memories stop talking to each other.
Over time it gets worse. Suppression keeps cortisol (the stress hormone) elevated, and cortisol shrinks the hippocampus. Chronically stressed people can lose 10 to 15% of its volume. Just three weeks of high cortisol can shrink the tiny connection points between brain cells by about 20%. The good news: studies show this shrinkage can partially reverse once stress levels drop. Not necessarily permanent.
A Finnish study of 1,137 older adults tracked over roughly a decade found that habitual emotion suppressors had nearly 5x the risk of developing dementia, even after controlling for genetics, smoking, obesity, and education.
There’s a better way to handle emotions that doesn’t cost you your memory. It’s called cognitive reappraisal: instead of bottling the feeling, you reframe what’s causing it. (“This meeting isn’t a threat, it’s practice.”) A 2003 Stanford/UC Berkeley study found reappraisers had more positive emotion, better relationships, and higher wellbeing. Suppressors got the opposite on every measure. And reappraisal carries zero memory cost.
The difference comes down to timing. Suppression kicks in after the emotion has already fired, so your brain is fighting its own response while simultaneously trying to record the moment. Reappraisal changes how you interpret the situation before the emotion fully activates. Same event, same person, but your hippocampus stays free to do its actual job: recording your life.
🧡: momo is so cute. she said her mom watched my movie or series or something im not too sure which. her mom told her "u have to take a photo with emi alright" shes soo cute i was really surprised. her mom is a fan~~
#emiamily
🧡: Momo was so cute! She told me that her mom watches my movie or series, I'm not exactly sure which one. Her mom told her, "You have to take a photo with Emi!" She was so sweet. I was so shocked! Her mom is a fan, but I don't know which show she watched... I forgot to ask.
#emiamily
This is Mochi. Cream Pomeranian puppy found a wooden stick and took it personally. Tumbling and rolling all over the concrete, squeaking his head off the whole time. Absolute heart melter.