This page describes how Night Thoughts is made, where our claims come from, and what we do when we get something wrong. It is written to be checked.
What we publish
Night Thoughts is an educational publication about human behaviour, relationships, boundaries, emotional intelligence, self-mastery, cognitive biases, social influence and the mind-brain connection. It is written for adults who want to understand patterns in themselves and other people.
It is not therapy, not diagnosis, not medical care, and not crisis support. That distinction is enforced in the writing, not just declared here. See our Psychology Disclaimer.
How we select sources
We prefer, in this order: systematic reviews and meta-analyses, randomised controlled trials, other peer-reviewed primary research, and publications from recognised professional or public institutions.
We avoid citing secondary coverage where the primary source is reachable. Where we can only reach a summary, such as a university press release describing a study, we say so in the reference rather than implying we read the paper.
Some sources are not accessible to us. Several major research databases block automated access. We do not attempt to circumvent those blocks, and we would rather cite fewer sources we have genuinely read than more we have not.
How we handle claims
Every article separates four things, and tries to make the difference visible to you as you read:
- Findings. Reported with the study design, sample and effect size where available.
- Limitations. Stated in the article, not buried. If a study is cross-sectional, we say it cannot establish cause. If a sample was 200 undergraduates in one country, we say so.
- Inference. Where we extend a finding beyond what was tested, we label it as reasoning rather than evidence.
- Practice convention. Some useful guidance comes from clinical practice rather than trials. We mark it as such instead of dressing it up as research.
We do not invent statistics. We do not cite a source that fails to support the exact sentence it is attached to. If a popular claim is unsupported, we say it is unsupported rather than repeating it.
What we will not do
- Diagnose anyone, or teach you to diagnose the people in your life.
- Use clinical terms such as narcissist, psychopath, trauma bond or gaslighting loosely, as insults, or as headline bait.
- Invent personal experience, clinical credentials, case studies, quotes, testimonials or experts.
- Publish fake reviews, fake comments or manufactured social proof.
- Promise that reading an article will fix a relationship or a person.
- Present dark-psychology secrets, mind-reading, or deterministic body-language claims.
AI-assisted production
We think you are entitled to know this plainly. Night Thoughts is produced with AI assistance, under human editorial direction and review. AI is used for drafting, structuring and research assistance. It is not used to invent facts, sources or experiences.
Every citation on this site was retrieved and read before use, and the limitations we report are the ones the study authors state. Editorial responsibility for what is published rests with the publisher, not with a tool.
Generated imagery
Some images on this site are generated rather than photographed. Generated imagery is used for atmosphere and illustration only. It is never presented as documentary evidence, never used to depict a real person or a real event, and never offered as support for a factual claim.
Links
We link to sources because we expect you to check them. External links are not endorsements of everything at the destination. We do not accept payment for links, and there is no affiliate or sponsored content on this site. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on the page in question before you read it.
Corrections and updates
If we get something wrong, we fix it and we say what changed. Material corrections are noted on the article itself rather than quietly edited away. We update the published date only when an article has changed meaningfully, never to make old work look new.
If you find an error, please tell us at our contact page. Corrections that affect a factual claim are treated as urgent.
Reader safety
Where a topic touches on situations that could be unsafe, we say where the article stops being adequate and point you toward specialist support. We deliberately do not publish emergency numbers, because giving you the wrong country’s service would be worse than giving you none.
Conflicts of interest
Night Thoughts has no commercial relationship with any therapy provider, app, supplement, course or training programme mentioned on this site. We are not paid to cover any topic.