Description: Ah politicians are a never-ending source of possible research topics! Assuming you have not been successful in selectively ignoring any political news from south of our border (and if you have please tell us how, as long as it does not involve a lobotomy or copious amounts of alcohol!) then you have heard about… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Social Psychology
Body Language and Cultural Complexity: How Important is a Nod?
Description: Here is a good example of how we need to think a bit when we are going to try and conduct research into something like a social behaviour that we are fairly sure we already understand completely. If you were having a conversation with someone and, throughout the conversation while you were speaking they… Read more »
Use Black Friday Data to Prepare for Boxing Day?
Description: Canadian Thanksgiving is earlier than American Thanksgiving but Boxing Day and its associated sales is later than Black Friday. I am not making any point there but leading up to suggesting that there are seasonal learning moment opportunities in the recent experience of Black Friday (which used to be more vicarious in the Canada… Read more »
Fake Moon Landings and Crashed Aliens: Who Believes in This Stuff?
Description: Was the Apollo moon landing a hoax filmed entirely on Earth? There are quite a few people around who claim that it was just that. Assuming for a moment that the moon landing was NOT a hoax or that the American Government does NOT have frozen aliens and flying saucer wreckage hidden in Area… Read more »
Unexpected Issues Faced by First Year Post-Secondary Students
Description: As students head off to university and college campuses next week (you may be one of them) think for a minute about what might be a BIG but unexpected issue that new first year students might have to (perhaps unexpectedly) deal with? A hint might be to think more closely about students who are… Read more »
Brand Choices and Relationships: Coke Vs Pepsi
Description: What sorts of things in our personal profiles make or break our relationships? Certainly religious differences might lead to us not pursuing a relationship — whether or not the other person wants children may be another such thing. But what about brand preferences? Coke or Pepsi? Think about how differences in brand preferences across… Read more »
Hiring and Other Prediction Decisions: Interviews Help, Right?
Description: Imagine you are going to hire someone to work for you. What information would you want to gather before making a hiring decision? Would you want to interview the applicants who looked good on paper? How much weight would the interview have in your decision about who to hire? How about if you were… Read more »
Politics These Days: Tips from Clinicians Who Treat Psychotic People
Description: Decades ago, psychiatrists used the term Schizophrenogenic Mothers to describe the mothers of individuals with schizophrenia and to then go on to talk about how the patient’s mother’s emotional ambivalence and related paradoxical behavior contributed to and perhaps even cause their offspring’s schizophrenia. Reflecting gender biased and even misogynistic attitudes, such hypotheses could simply… Read more »
Bystander Effects in the Age of Social Media
Description: If you have taken an introductory psychology course that included a section on social psychology you have likely heard about the Kitty Genovese case. It occurred in 1964 when Ms. Genovese was stabbed to death by an attacker in the Queens borough of New York in the very early morning hours. Accounts of the… Read more »
Impulsivity: What Does It Predict?
Description: Given a choice would you rather have $40 right now or $80 next month? Seriously, which would you likely pick? Picking $40 now may seem like a small thing but it may reflect a fairly broad reaching underlying cognitive style of impulsivity. What sorts of day to day behaviors do you think would be… Read more »
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