A robust finding in social psychology is that people judge negative events as less likely to happen to themselves than to the average person, a behavior interpreted as showing that people are "unrealistically optimistic" in their judgments of risk concerning future life events. However, we demonstrate how unbiased responses can result in data…

The stereotypical view of English spelling as an awesome mess is no longer widely held by linguists. That view assumes that spelling should represent pronunciation directly and simply. Instead, spelling is currently understood as representing a more abstract level of language as well as reflecting etymology. Examples from a middle school spelling…