When I was growing up, teachers would assign research papers that required going to the library, or later, searching for relevant material on the internet. If the paper was going to turn out well, we students needed to patiently comb through piles of material, weaving what we found into a coherent argument that was well-supported with evidence.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, our teachers were giving us a chance to develop our patience.

That chance is rapidly disappearing with increased use of artificial intelligence tools. Now you can have an AI do everything from school assignments to legal writing, sermon preparation, vacation planning, work emails and academic research. Researchers are already documenting how using AI tools in these contexts likely erodes critical thinking skills.

But what hasn’t been appreciated is AI’s effect on patience. As a philosopher who has written extensively about virtue, including the virtue of patience, I am especially concerned about what people can do to resist this trend.

What is patience, and why is it important?

Patience involves responding calmly when it is taking longer than you want to accomplish your goals.

When I am stuck in a traffic jam, or the checkout line is barely moving, I might wish that I was meeting my goals faster, but my calm demeanor is a sign that I am being patient. If I react to delays like these with frustration or anger, that is a sign that I am being impatient.

The same applies in the case of doing research. If it is taking me awhile to find everything I need, that can test my patience. But if I react to such a delay with calmness, I avoid frustration or anger and hence impatience.

Philosophers, theologians and educators have long considered patience an important character trait to cultivate. It is a virtue that contributes to well-being. More specifically, researchers have linked it to a variety of good outcomes, including healthier lifestyles, greater emotion regulation, more fulfilling relationships, increased caring about equity and justice, increased cooperation, greater purpose in life, lower depression and higher life satisfaction.

Why AI tools erode a capacity for patience

AI tools are helping foster a culture of immediacy, thereby diminishing the capacity for patience. Admittedly, we already started down this path with the dawn of the internet and the launch of fast and easy search engines. But now, AI instantaneously delivers fully developed answers, further reducing the delays once experienced as people searched, assessed and integrated information from various sources.

The training in patience that people used to get from thorough research and investigation is being replaced by a growing sense of impatience with thinking that takes time and effort. And this impatience doesn’t just stop with research. It extends to writing as well.

Research on AI and patience is still in its infancy. But my conclusions about these impacts rest on plausible inferences from what researchers know more generally about cognitive psychology. For instance, psychologists have long understood that people’s expectations change due to repeated use and exposure to something.

This adaptation explains why the hourlong train ride to work can start out as exhausting, but become part of your daily routine. Or you might initially be impressed by how fast your new computer is, but after a while you take it for granted and get frustrated if loading a PowerPoint presentation takes even a few moments.

Hence using AI tools is likely to recalibrate what feels normal to you. In particular, it is likely to normalize getting immediate, fully formed answers to your questions. This shift, I contend, makes people increasingly impatient with the very tasks of research and investigation that helped train us to become more patient in the past.

One concrete illustration of this change is with students. If a professor gives an assignment involving interpreting an author’s text and then developing a critique of the author’s position, students today are very tempted to offload the patient work of interpretation and critique to an AI.

Or consider sermon preparation. Pastors normally take hours a week to examine the original language for their text, consult commentaries, develop illustrations and examples, and deliberate about practical applications. Now, this process can all be done in a matter of seconds using AI, and one study found that a majority of pastors are using it for sermon preparation. There is no patience training happening here.

What can be done?

There are ways to cultivate patience in the age of AI tools, but they will not be easy. Here are three:

• Deliberately choose a slower path. Select this option because it comes with intellectual struggles, not in spite of them. Don’t rely on AI summaries or shortcuts, but try to come up with the answers on your own. This choice needs to be deliberative since the default human tendency is to take the easier route. But the long-term benefit is worth the short-term cost.

• Design your environment. Remove AI tools from your surroundings and carve out dedicated time free of distractions and notifications. Reading and writing take time, and by being willing to invest that time and not get impatient with how long it is taking, you can cultivate patience.

• Encourage and reward intellectual engagement. Institutions such as schools and churches have a structural role to play. The more such institutions can resist integrating AI tools into every aspect of their operations, and instead incentivize human intellectual engagement even at the expense of efficiency, the better as far as patience is concerned.

There is one other hopeful suggestion. Patience can be developed in lots of different areas of life that have nothing to do with research and which are less susceptible to AI incursion. Working on a craft project, detailing a car, weeding a garden, practicing your basketball shot, lifting weights – all these activities can foster patience too. The more this character muscle is strengthened, the more it will be available to use in many different areas of your life.

Christian B. Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Since 2015, Smith College, one of the largest and most prestigious women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States, has allowed any student who identifies as female to apply to and attend the school.

Over the past decade or so, most other women’s colleges in the U.S. have taken similar steps, permitting transgender female students to apply.

The Trump administration is trying to end that practice. The Department of Education announced on May 4, 2026, that it had opened a Title IX investigation into Smith for admitting transgender students.

“Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law,” Kimberly Richey, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, explained in a statement.

The Education Department’s announcement signals a new front for the Trump administration. Until now, the administration’s battles over transgender students have largely focused on restricting their participation in team sports and preventing them from using bathrooms based on their gender identity.

As a legal scholar who has written extensively on gender identity nondiscrimination laws, I find it notable that the administration invokes Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, a 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funding.

What is striking is that this law does not, under any circumstance, apply to Smith’s admissions decisions. Title IX’s language is clear that law does not cover the admissions decisions that private colleges and universities make.

At the same time, the investigation adds to the mounting pressure colleges and universities have faced since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025. So, even if the investigation ultimately does not result in a lawsuit or court case, the probe still has high stakes for schools around the country.

What Title IX says – and leaves out

Title IX protects against sex-based discrimination in any educational program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.

The law’s scope is broad: It guarantees equal opportunity in all aspects of education. That includes academics, athletics, events, extracurricular activities and financial aid. The law also requires schools to address sexual violence, sexual harassment and stalking. These safeguards extend beyond students, protecting faculty and staff at schools.

Since the law applies to all educational settings that receive federal financial assistance, it reaches nearly all public and private schools, from elementary schools through universities.

But Title IX still has limits. For example, it allows single-sex schools, like Smith, to exist.

Smith is one of 30 women’s colleges in the U.S. There are also four men’s colleges in the country.

Additionally – and crucially for the Education Department’s investigation – Title IX is clear that it does not apply to the admissions decisions that private undergraduate institutions make.

Title IX states that the law applies to the admissions decisions of “only institutions of vocational education, professional education, and graduate higher education, and to public institutions of undergraduate higher education.”

Private undergraduate colleges, like Smith, are not on the list.

The Trump administration’s use of Title IX

There is no legal basis for the Education Department’s decision to investigate Smith “for admitting biological men.” Nevertheless, the investigation could still spell trouble for the college – and other colleges and universities.

The second Trump administration has repeatedly targeted schools with transgender-inclusive policies.

In March 2025, the White House froze US$175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed transgender women to compete in female team sports.

It released the funding after Penn reversed its policy on transgender athletes.

In early 2026, the Education Department also announced Title IX investigations into 18 universities and colleges because they allowed transgender students to participate in women’s team sports.

The Education Department has additionally launched Title IX investigations into K-12 schools based on their bathroom policies. In August 2025, for example, it determined that Denver Public Schools were in violation of Title IX for allowing transgender students to use the restrooms that align with their gender identity.

Title IX battles

The Education Department appears to be basing its investigation into Smith on the fact that Title IX permits educational institutions to maintain some sex-segregated spaces. These include sports teams and bathrooms. But how transgender students fit within the statute’s framework is an open question.

In 2024, the Education Department under the Biden administration determined that Title IX protects the rights of transgender students to live according to their gender identity. It produced regulations requiring schools to comply with this interpretation of the law.

This followed a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, Bostock v. Clayton County. In that case, the court determined that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, another law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in workplaces, protected against gender identity discrimination.

In January 2025, however, a federal district court in Kentucky ruled that the Biden administration’s regulations were invalid. Since then, the Trump administration has taken the position that sex is assigned at birth and unchangeable.

Because of this back-and-forth, Title IX’s protections for transgender students have depended on who is in the White House.

The investigation’s broader implications

Title IX does not reach Smith’s admissions decisions, based on the plain language of the law. However, the law does affect the school’s other policies, such as restroom access. As a result, the investigation will likely embroil the college in a lengthy legal battle.

Smith has not commented on the government investigation, other than to say the school is “fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.”

As the Education Department’s process unfolds, Smith will face a crucial choice. It could accede to the Trump administration’s demands. Alternatively, it could fight for transgender student rights. In the process, it could set precedent on what Title IX requires, thereby protecting transgender people around the country.

The decision will not be easy. Smith receives limited federal grants, but battling the Education Department requires expending time, attention and money to a lawsuit rather than devoting those resources to student education.

At a time when higher education is feeling the strain of the Trump administration in the form of funding freezes, student loan limitations and civil rights investigations, it is difficult for colleges and universities to resist federal demands.

Smith is better positioned than most, given its prestigious rank, extensive alumni network and sizable endowment.

How the college responds could be a test of higher education’s wherewithal to withstand a hostile executive branch. Where Smith goes, others will likely follow.

Marie-Amelie George does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

If you wanted to learn the Cherokee language in the 1990s, there weren’t many written resources: three dissertations from the 1970s and ’80s, one textbook and a handful of college classes in North Carolina and Oklahoma. Even on most Cherokee land, it was unusual to see street or building signs in this endangered Indigenous language.

There are nearly 500,000 enrolled members in the three federally recognized Cherokee Tribes: the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band, both based in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, based in North Carolina. Only about 2,000 of those members speak Cherokee as a first language.

But over the past few decades, opportunities for learners of all ages have exploded. One of the authors of this article, Thomas Belt – a first-language speaker from Oklahoma – has been honored to play a role in that resurgence, working as a teacher, curriculum developer and language consultant. Today there is bilingual signage throughout the Eastern Cherokee reservation, in the Cherokee Nation capital of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and on tribal buildings and some private businesses throughout Cherokee country.

Cherokees of all ages and in communities across the U.S. are working to revitalize the language in new ways, from apps, games and videos to social media, music and immersion schools.

Amid all this innovation, there is also a 200-year-old resource that language learners turn to: the Cherokee translation of the Christian Bible.

New writing system

Translating the Bible into Cherokee began early in the 19th century, shortly after Protestant missionaries arrived in the Cherokee Nation – centered mainly in what are now western North Carolina, north Georgia and eastern Tennessee.

In 1821, the brilliant Cherokee Sequoyah invented a writing system for the Cherokee language. First, he identified all the vowels, consonants and combinations of them used in the Cherokee language. He then invented and taught characters for every syllable – making his writing system a syllabary rather than an alphabet that assigns a character to each individual consonant or vowel.

The elegance of the system made it easy for speakers to learn, and Cherokee literacy rates were reportedly high soon after its invention. The 1828 launch of the bilingual Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper in the U.S., is testimony to the writing system’s popularity.

It also made it easy for the Cherokee to read the Bible, once it had been translated. Teams of Euro-American missionaries and Cherokee converts produced a Cherokee version of the Book of John in 1824. A complete Cherokee New Testament and most of the Old Testament emerged in the following decades.

3 options

For language learners today, the Cherokee Bible is much more than a source of words. In our 2025 book “The New Voice of God,” we found that the text captures the cross-cultural encounter that produced it. The translation does more than show how the Cherokee interpreted Christian theology; it is a window into the Cherokee worldview.

At the time, Cherokee did not have words for many of the concepts found in the Bible – hypocrisy, poverty, power and king, to name just a few. In such situations, translators have three options.

One is to use loan words, borrowed from the foreign language. Texts heavy with loan words, though, often require special training or guides in order for the general public to read them. We did not find any true loan words in the parts of the Bible we studied.

A second option is semantic extension: using a word whose meaning is similar in some way, creating a kind of cross-cultural metaphor. This happens frequently in the Cherokee translation. For example, sheep and shepherds appear frequently in the Bible, but sheep are not indigenous to the Americas. Instead, the translation uses the word for deer, “ahwi,” to translate sheep and represents a shepherd as “ahwi diktiya,” or deer-watcher.

The third option is to create a new descriptive word, a process also seen throughout the translation. For example, the Cherokee word for idols is “unehlanvhi diyelvhi,” meaning imaginary gods.

Cultural differences

In some cases, translators’ challenges suggested deep differences between a Western worldview and their own.

Christian missionaries’ culture drew a clear distinction between the sacred and the secular. In Cherokee culture, however, science, ritual and belief are tightly intertwined.

Specialized Christian terms such as resurrection, repentance, sin, purity, baptism, salvation and blessing didn’t translate well into that worldview. The expression of those concepts in Cherokee thus reads as more ordinary and accessible than in English.

‘Child’ of God

Major differences between the grammars of Cherokee and English also shaped how Cherokee Christians reframed biblical concepts. For example, Cherokee has no gendered pronouns: no equivalents of he, she, him, her, his or hers. This means that beings who are not clearly recognizable as human men or women, such as angels, devils and God, come across as gender-neutral in the Cherokee translation.

God becomes masculine only when referred to as a father, as in “ogidoda,” “our father.” Instead, the Cherokee Bible most commonly translates God as “unehlanvhi,” which is usually interpreted as meaning a gender-neutral creator. Jesus is described as the “uwetsi,” or child, of God – even though there is a fuller Cherokee phrase, “uwetsi atsusa,” boy child, that could have clearly identified Jesus as the son of God.

In English, some speakers consider “mankind” to refer to both men and women. But in Cherokee, the word for man, “asgaya,” is not interpreted that way. Whenever the word man appears in English translations of the Bible, the Cherokee word “yvwi,” person, is used, or occasionally “kilo,” someone. This inclusivity would have resonated much better with traditional Cherokee culture, which was more egalitarian and matrilineal, with ancestry and property passed down through mothers.

Learning today

The Bible plays various roles in today’s Cherokee language learning, including as a source of vocabulary. For example, the most widely used online Cherokee dictionary gives Genesis 28:18 as its sample text for the word “go’i,” oil. But it also models how to form fluent phrases and sentences, mark transitions, narrate events and correctly use Cherokee’s complex grammar.

Perhaps even more importantly, the Cherokee Bible offers invaluable insight into Cherokee-specific meanings, interpretations of social and spiritual concepts, and a benchmark for understanding how the language has changed. Though the history of the relationship between Christian missionaries and Indigenous people is complex, this historic text is supporting an impressive contemporary wave of cultural and linguistic renewal.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Around 1 in 5 Americans say they’ve seen a ghost. I’m not one of them, and I probably never will be. I blame my brain.

Let me explain. No one can say definitively that ghosts exist, but many people believe they do. Roughly three-quarters of Americans believe in some form of paranormal activity – not only ghosts, but psychic abilities, precognitive dreams, mediums and anything else that conventional explanations can’t account for.

As a psychology professor, I often think about the subjectivity people use when interpreting experiences. I wonder, then, if there are perfectly ordinary explanations for seemingly extraordinary experiences. Maybe a perfect storm of everyday factors can converge and trigger the sensation of a paranormal experience.

In my new book, “Science of the Supernatural,” I explore the idea that the human brain might be creating an experience of the supernatural by misinterpreting the external world. Here are three factors that might trick your brain into creating a fake ghost:

Haunted factor #1: Environmental stimuli

Anyone who’s ever watched a ghost hunting show has seen the paranormal investigator mutter something like “The EMF’s going crazy” when there’s purported supernatural activity afoot. Electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, are invisible areas of energy created by electrically charged particles.

At present, there is no direct evidence that humans can consciously sense EMF the same way we can touch, see or hear things in our environment. But with a handheld device purchased at a local hardware store, you can measure them anywhere. An EMF detector picks up electrical or magnetic activity, whether human-made or otherworldly. But do EMF fluctuations relate to paranormal activity?

The scientific method might help answer this question. In one study, conducted in the South Street vaults underneath Edinburgh, Scotland, EMFs fluctuated more in areas with a history of ghostly happenings. Another study found greater variability of EMFs in the more “haunted” areas of Hampton Court Palace in England.

People might unknowingly be detecting changes in environmental stimuli, like electromagnetic fields. The question then becomes: Did the ghost cause the EMF, or did the EMF cause the ghost?

To date, only one research group has attempted to experimentally manipulate environmental factors, including complex EMF, and measure subsequent perceptions of the paranormal.

Participants did report many peculiarities, ranging from feeling dizzy to feeling like they were detached from their bodies and even sensing a presence – but these experiences didn’t correspond to how the researchers varied environmental conditions, like EMF intensity. Interestingly, the people who described anomalous experiences were the same people who believed more strongly in the paranormal.

Do environmental factors like EMF lead to perceptions of the paranormal? On the one hand, there is a correlation between reportedly haunted places and EMF variability. And there are some indications that humans can detect magnetism. On the other hand, experimental manipulation of EMF did not relate to weird perceptions in a lab setting.

I think we need to look into other haunted factors.

Haunted factor #2: Neurological mix-ups

By applying a small electrical current to the side of the head, usually to evaluate a patient for a clinical procedure, researchers have observed some strange effects. One case study described a patient who experienced an “illusory shadow figure” that was mimicking, and even interfering, with their movements. Other people have reported out-of-body experiences.

Experimental evidence suggests that this brain area, the temporoparietal junction, is probably crucial for the feeling of embodiment – that you inhabit your own body. Disrupting this brain area seems to trigger a sensation of disembodiment.

Neuroscientists aren’t completely sure how the sense of embodiment is built in the brain. The brain probably integrates bodily senses, like balance and position, with other internal processes, like a sense of self and agency. When this integration is altered, a person will experience very strange sensations.

Sometimes, misinterpretation of sensations from the body can happen during sleep, when your brain shuts out the external world. During rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, when most vivid dreams occur, the brain sends messages that prevent movement of skeletal muscles. This inhibition causes complete paralysis during REM sleep. It is a neurological safeguard; without it, you would be likely to act out your dreams.

Some people, though, wake up during REM sleep and find that they cannot move. They may simultaneously experience rich hallucinations – the remnants of their dream. This experience passes quickly. But in that moment of sleep paralysis, the neural signals that control skeletal muscle movement are inhibited, resulting in a mismatch of feedback from the body to the brain. Most people respond to the missing sensory information with fear, which makes them more likely to experience the sights and sounds from their dreams as reality.

Haunted factor #3: Personality traits

Living through a paranormal encounter requires that a person label their experience as such. If a believer were exposed to fluctuating EMFs, for example, they might be quick to categorize the strange sensation as paranormal. A skeptic might note they felt weird or off, but probably not point to a paranormal explanation.

There’s a growing body of research that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal.

For instance, some people are hyperaware of unconscious perceptions and ideas, which then permeate their consciousness. Often, these traits are associated with magical thinking, distorted or unusual thoughts, disorganized behavior and, sometimes, trouble forming close relationships.

Psychologists refer to this set of traits as schizotypy. They’re related to schizophrenia, although being high in schizotypy doesn’t mean you will be diagnosed with the disorder of schizophrenia. People with high levels of schizotypy are more likely to believe in the paranormal. They’re also more likely to experience disembodiment and spontaneous sensory perceptions and have trouble discriminating between self and others.

All of these traits relate to the function of the temporoparietal junction – the brain area that helps you know you’re located within your own body.

When haunted factors add up to a ghost

While I cannot say for sure whether ghosts exist, I can propose a plausible explanation for why some people might be more prone to apparent paranormal experiences than others.

Consider a person who believes in paranormal phenomena who experiences a natural change in electromagnetic fields or an episode of sleep paralysis. Those experiences induce unusual sensations that this person cannot explain. Searching for meaning in ambiguity, this person distorts their distinction between internally and externally generated sensations. They settle on the only explanation that makes sense to them – that this strange feeling they experienced was a ghost.

My guess is that belief in the paranormal is the glue that holds the haunted factors together to create the (mis)perception of a ghost.

One experiment asked participants to walk through a disused theater in Decatur, Illinois. Some were told that the theater was haunted, and some were not. Several participants noted weird sensations that they attributed to paranormal activity – but only those who believed that the theater was haunted reported these sensations.

Belief alone might not create a ghost, but belief combined with at least one haunted factor – environmental stimuli, neurological hiccups or psychological conditions – might be enough to make a ghost real.

This becomes a chicken-or-the-egg riddle – or in this case, the ghost or the EMF. Someone who is more likely to be sensitive to environmental factors or who experiences sleep paralysis might create belief from their experiences. When someone cannot explain these experiences with any “natural” explanation, a supernatural explanation might be the only one that makes sense.

I’ve never noticed EMF. I’ve never experienced sleep paralysis. I’m pretty sure I don’t have personality traits like schizotypy. I don’t believe in the paranormal. And I don’t think I’ll ever see a ghost.

Melissa Maffeo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The 2026 World Cup promises to be the planet’s most-watched sporting event. It’s also poised to generate its fair share of controversy.

Taking into account the history of corruption in FIFA, the sport’s governing body, it would be hard to blame anyone who decided to ignore this year’s competition.

However, some viewers of this summer’s tournament may face an additional dilemma.

Political tensions are high in the U.S., where most of the tournament’s matches will be played. The Trump administration is historically unpopular, and its critics are already concerned about sportswashing: when governments use the spectacle of athletic competition to burnish their image and distract the public.

As I point out in my 2022 book, “The Ethics of Sports Fandom,” fans who are critical of their country’s behavior sometimes feel ambivalent about rooting for their national sports teams – and may even feel compelled to root against them.

After all, it’s one thing to pull for your national team when patriotism feels uncomplicated. It’s quite another when you aren’t feeling very proud to be an American.

The Cold War made it easy for many Americans to rally behind the 1980 U.S men’s hockey team in its victory over the Soviet Union in the “Miracle on Ice.” But what do you do when you don’t see your country as the “good guys”?

Patriotism doesn’t mean blind loyalty

Some fans might double down on their patriotic commitments during the tournament. They’ll use the occasion to champion America in all things, whether it’s the country’s battles in the Middle East or its national team taking on Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

Sports have a way of fueling nationalistic passions, and I fully expect plenty of people who don’t care much about soccer to channel their patriotic sentiments into the tournament.

However, rooting for your country’s national soccer team doesn’t mean that you endorse everything your country does, any more than wanting a friend to get a promotion at work requires you to support all of their behavior. As the philosopher Eamonn Callan has argued, a proper love of country requires citizens to be clear-eyed about its faults. The true patriot highlights problems and works to correct them, independent of how much they want the national team to win their next match.

By the same token, I think a deep love of country can coexist with ambivalent feelings about how the national team performs on the field. If patriots can disapprove of their country’s military adventurism – either because they see it as flatly unjust or because it casts their country in an unfavorable light on the international stage – there is nothing fundamentally unpatriotic about not wanting the U.S. to do well in the World Cup.

Other fans might invoke the mantra that it’s important to simply keep politics out of sports – that the games should be a refuge from the controversies that plague so many other aspects of civic life.

But as I argue in my book, fully separating politics and sports is almost impossible. It requires fans to view athletes as nothing more than bodies who exist to perform on the field. It means team executives and owners do little more than sign paychecks. And it ignores the reality that sports are woven into the social, economic and political life of communities.

Outcomes don’t change a thing

For fans who choose to watch, then, my suggestion is to view the action on the field as you would any other sporting event.

Root for whomever you want to win, for more or less any reason that moves you.

Because for all the political significance attached to the World Cup, the winner or loser of any given contest has essentially no broader political significance. The problems that existed before the tournament will still demand attention when it is over, no matter who happens to win.

Success or failure on the pitch isn’t likely to bring about meaningful political change. After all, whether a government has the right legislative agenda or approach to foreign policy is totally divorced from its national soccer team’s ability to score goals.

Viewed in this way, rooting for your country’s national soccer team doesn’t imply blind loyalty to your country or ignorance of its flaws. It simply means that you want the athletes who represent your country to win the game they are playing on that particular day.

Athletes have long been able to navigate this ambivalence. You’ll regularly hear them trying to separate a love of their country and its people from support of problematic regimes.

When Iranian soccer player Mehdi Taremi refused to celebrate a goal in a January 2026 Greek Super League match, he embraced precisely such a position. Thousands of people had been killed during protests of the Iranian regime, and the moment called for a different reaction.

“There are problems between the people and the government,” he said. “The people are always with us, and that’s why we are with them.” For Teremi, publicly celebrating as an Iranian citizen abroad felt too much like endorsing the current regime, something he had no desire to do. If the athletes who wear their national colors can maintain such nuanced views, surely fans can, too.

Of course, nuance can be difficult in today’s political climate, and the rhetoric around the World Cup likely won’t change that. When the U.S. men’s hockey team won gold at the Olympics back in February, Donald Trump attempted to turn it into a personal political victory by inviting the team to his State of the Union address.

“Our country is winning again,” Trump said, devoting nearly six minutes of his speech to the team’s victory.

The outlook for the U.S. men in this year’s World Cup is not quite as bright, but chances are good that someone will try to co-opt their success or failure for political purposes. Fans don’t have to fall into the trap.

Adam Kadlac does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Picture Gigi, having a chat with her boss, when the meeting takes a sharp turn. Gigi’s boss tells her that her work has been lacking recently and that maybe she needs to stay late a couple of evenings to make it up. Surprised by her boss’s remarks, she feels the rumblings of anxiety rising in her mind and body. Psychology research suggests that Gigi feels anxious because she interpreted her boss’s remarks as something threatening that perhaps she can’t handle.

Just as Gigi starts frantically looking online for new jobs, she spies the “employee of the month” plaque on her desk from last year. She thinks to herself that maybe she can get back to her old form. She has changed her initial view of the situation (need to run away from a threat) to a new one (let’s rise to the challenge), causing her anxiety to subside. Psychologists call this process reappraisal.

Studies show that reappraising emotional situations is a powerful way to change how you feel. When you find the silver linings in bad situations or give others and yourself the benefit of the doubt, it can help you feel better.

I’m a psychology researcher who’s interested in how people change their emotions. Gigi may feel a little less anxious in the moment, but does she truly believe that she can make up the work on time and regain her former glory? My colleagues and I set out to investigate whether it’s possible to start the process of reappraisal without going all the way through with it. Are people getting the full benefit from trying to think differently about their emotions?

Reappraisal has multiple steps

When my colleague Kateri McRae and I first started thinking about what it means to fully reappraise emotional experiences, we were struck by something we saw in the emotion regulation research. Almost all of the studies treated reappraisal as a one-step process. Researchers would ask participants to “reappraise this to make yourself feel better” and then measure the effects.

However, theories about how people regulate their emotions suggest that, like any effortful psychological process, reappraisal involves multiple steps.

When you want to change how you’re feeling, you first generate a reappraisal. You bend and stretch your mind to come up with some alternative way to look at the situation. For Gigi, seeing the employee of the month plaque helped. She could have also thought of her boss’s previous compliments or how it felt to get projects done early.

After you generate a reappraisal, it might seem like you’re done, but you’re not. That alternative interpretation is fragile and must compete with your original take that’s driving your emotion. Somehow you need to strengthen that reappraisal so it can stick.

We call this implementation – when you focus and elaborate on that reappraisal to really change your mind about the situation. For Gigi, she may continue to think about all the ways that she can be a great employee so that it lodges firmly in her mind and makes her anxiety truly disappear.

We tested this idea in a study. We showed 89 undergraduate participants images of negative situations and asked them to first just generate a reappraisal of the image that could help them feel better about it. For example, they might see a picture of a frail man in a hospital bed and tell themselves that the man is getting good treatment and will be better soon. Then, we showed them the image again and asked them to focus and elaborate in their mind on their reappraisal.

Participants felt a little better after generating a reappraisal, but they felt much better after implementing it by focusing and fleshing out the details. In a follow-up study, we showed that these emotional boosts persisted when viewing the images later.

Choosing to commit to feeling better

So we experimentally showed that people reappraise their feelings in two steps. So what? That’s probably what everyone does naturally, anyway, right?

This was the next question we sought to answer. We conducted a study with 52 undergraduate participants like the earlier one, but with a twist. This time, after participants generated a reappraisal, we gave them a choice to continue the reappraisal process by implementing it or to stop the process by distracting themselves.

Participants chose to continue reappraising their emotions only about half the time. Even though reappraisal made participants feel better about the emotional images, there were still many times when they stopped the process prematurely and did not enjoy its full benefits.

In real life

These studies showing the benefits of fully following through on emotional reappraisals are lab experiments, but they have implications for how people try to help themselves feel better in real life.

First, it’s hard to intentionally change how you think about something, and people tend to dislike continuing to do hard things. Indeed, in our choice study, people opted to give up on reappraising when they weren’t feeling its benefits early on. Knowing this human tendency might give you the best chance of continuing reappraisal even when it doesn’t feel like it’s working or is hard.

Second, people often get reappraisals from others, and it’s tempting to think that hearing a new perspective is all you need. Indeed, we have unpublished data that shows that participants feel pretty good when receiving a reappraisal from someone else about their own situation. But other people cannot change your mind for you. You must do that yourself if you want to truly feel better.

Next time you’re in an unpleasant situation like Gigi’s, don’t just cursorily think that you can rise to the challenge. Really think through the situation and let your new perspective become your only one.

Christian Waugh receives funding from National Institutes of Health.

At the world premiere of “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” actress Meryl Streep leaned into her character’s devilish persona. She wore the character’s signature sunglasses along with long black gloves and a flowing red leather cape from Givenchy’s Winter 2026 collection.

Streep’s outfit, though, is a small moment in a much larger story – one in which Christianity and fashion have been intertwined for centuries, sometimes as adversaries, sometimes as collaborators.

While neither of the “Devil Wears Prada” movies revolve around Christianity, the invocation of the devil taps into an older moral rhetoric. For centuries, fashion was cast as the troublesome, if not villainous, enemy of a pure and spiritual Christianity – a symbol of putting material desires before holy ones. For example, 18th-century cleric and founder of Methodism John Wesley urged his followers to show their faith by dressing “neatly” and “plainly.”

Yet Christian imagery has come to shape the industry in profound ways. As a scholar who researches the relationship between Christianity and fashion, I have traced how Christian imagery circulates in surprising forms. The devil, for instance, occasionally appeared in fashion advertising to suggest sin, sensuality and transgression.

Christian imagery of angels and Eve

In the mid-20th century, Christianity often occupied a supporting role in the fashion industry. It showed up in articles by Christian religious leaders and color photographs of Christian art and architecture published in fashion magazines.

For example, articles on how Christianity addresses contemporary problems by Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen and Columbia University Chaplain James A. Pike appeared in Vogue alongside ads for makeup and fashion photo shoots.

Christian imagery also appeared in fashion advertisements featuring “Sunday best” clothing and Easter dresses. Ads showed angels gifting consumers “heavenly” products that promised beauty and ease.

The devil only occasionally played a part in ads for fashion products, such as perfumes, makeup and handkerchiefs. These advertisements depicted the devil as a snake or alluded to him and his role in the Book of Genesis. The biblical passage recounts how the serpent, typically interpreted as the devil in Christian theology, tempted Eve to sin by eating the forbidden fruit. Eve then offers the fruit to Adam, and, having both sinned, they realize their nakedness, are ashamed and make clothing.

Fashion advertisements, ranging from Revlon in the 1940s to Hanes in the 1960s, celebrated Eve’s rebellious action. Revlon “double” dared women to try their “Fatal Apple” makeup so they could look like Eve, while Hanes stated, “Poor Girl! She never knew the temptation of seamless stockings by Hanes,” next to an illustration of Eve holding an apple by a serpent.

Ads played with the idea of fashion as a temptation in which female consumers should indulge. Female consumers were urged to “Be Eve” and give into the desire to purchase products.

The devil was eclipsed as ads featured garden settings and products that promised “the look of Eve.” Eve symbolized beauty and promised consumers the same results through their purchasing power.

A 1967 ad for the “Eve Petticoat” issued an invitation: “Come, pretty girl. Be Eve, if you wish.” In that same decade, Catalina’s “part of the art of Eve” campaign for their swimwear showed what this meant. Each ad featured a woman in a provocative pose wearing a Catalina bathing suit in a garden setting. By donning Catalina, the ad implies, the wearer can become Eve – attractive, stylish and sexy. By highlighting Eve’s rebellion alongside her beauty, ads framed her as a fashion heroine.

Eve’s prominent role in advertising demonstrates how the Judeo-Christian tradition permeated American culture, including the fashion industry.

An evolving fashion landscape

While Christianity appeared in industry advertisements, it also slowly began to take a more prominent role in fashion garments, as designers became more bold. Christianity inspired the design of many garments, and later, Christian figures began to appear on designer garments.

For example, in the 1960s, American designer Geoffrey Beene, known for his minimalist design aesthetic, drew inspiration from the cassocks worn by Catholic priests. So, too, did Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. In 1967, his black evening gown with cape radiated simplicity in form and draping even as it also referenced the attire of Catholic priests.

While Beene and Balenciaga received praise for their restraint and elegance, the lesser-known London-born designer Walter Holmes created controversy with his “mini-medievals” in 1968. Modeled after a monk’s robe and a nun’s habit, Holmes combined Christian inspiration with the miniskirt trend, which some people found fun, while others labeled it offensive.

In the 1990s, Italian luxury fashion brand Krizia’s collection included women wearing cassock-like dresses, while Italian fashion designer Stefano Pilati’s 2010 line for Yves Saint Laurent played on the attire of Catholic nuns.

More recently, in spring 2020, French designer Virginie Viard’s designs for Chanel referenced nuns and Catholic school girl uniforms.

‘Spiritual marketplace’

In the 1990s, Christianity began playing an even larger part in fashion, as the Virgin Mary and saints began to appear on garments. Prior to this, designers often avoided using religious figures; they preferred more abstract interpretations; it also helped prevent any controversy that might emerge from depicting sacred figures.

Designer Gianni Versace challenged this tacit rule in his Fall/Winter 1991 collection. It included biker jackets adorned with bejeweled crosses and, in the finale, a halter top that featured the Virgin Mary made out of a mosaic of jewels. The garment was also the centerpiece of ads for the collection and showcased the fashion potential of Christian figures.

Versace’s Marian halter reflected the larger shift away from institutional religion toward individual spirituality. Christian symbols were lifted from church contexts and recirculated through popular culture, including fashion, in new ways. Versace’s rock star rendering of the Virgin Mary offered people a new way of seeing her – one open to interpretation outside of doctrine. Like Versace, they could claim her and reimagine her on their own terms.

Sociologist Wade Clark Roof described the religious landscape as a “spiritual marketplace.” People relied less on religious authorities and more on the meaning they could create from “available images, symbols, moral codes, and doctrines.”

Religious ideas and products circulated through music and movies, crystal shops and sports stadiums, Christian bookstores and designer collections. Within this spiritual bazaar, fashion became a place where people could reimagine Christian symbols, figures and history in new ways.

Modern-day trends

In the years since, Christianity has become a regular feature in fashion collections. Most notably, Christianity regularly has a starring role in the work of Dolce & Gabbana. Their 1998 “Stromboli” collection revolved around a Christian theme, a Marian procession, and dresses, tunics and blouses featuring Marian imagery.

The design duo have returned to Christian imagery several times. For example, their 2013 “Tailored Mosaic” line, inspired by the golden mosaics in the Cathedral of Monreale in Sicily, featured garments adorned with angels, saints and Mary, as well as biblical figures.

A critic called the mix of garments the designers’ “most heavenly offerings to date.” In 2018, Christian themes and symbols again permeated their collection.

It is now almost commonplace for fashion lines to reference or include Christian symbols, themes and figures. At New York Fashion Week in 2026, YesuGod, “a luxury Christian fashion house,” showcased its designs – garments adorned with the words “anno domini” and others with “the Lord is Coming.” More recently, in 2025, the vestments of Catholic priests inspired Dolce & Gabbana’s menswear collection.

The devil makes only an occasional appearance on the fashion runway and on the red carpet; historically, too, his presence has been minimal. Christian figures who embody ideals of goodness and holiness – saints, Mary and even Jesus – are the ones who rule the runway. Christianity and fashion are not so separate after all.

Lynn S. Neal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.