Description: You may recall, if you are regular reader of this blog, that I have written before about the Dark Triad of personality traits (Psychopathy, Machiavellianism and Narcissism, a lovely combination). Recent research has added Sadism to the list and created the Dark Tetrad (social interaction gets better and better!). Some recent research has done… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Personality
Not “Are You Creative” but “Can You Become Creative”
Description: In this post I am introducing you to another blog post that has just started under the Psychology Today umbrella. It is written by a couple of profs at George Mason University in Virginia and it is going to focus upon a view of creativity as a craft that can be practiced and honed… Read more »
Organizations and Toxic People: Understanding Perplexing Advancement
Description: You have, do doubt, encountered toxic people in your life. Even without labels, you know the sorts of things they do – manipulating social situations, taking advantage of others, particularly when the others are honest and humble, or currying favor with those in charge. In day-to-day life you can often simply walk away from… Read more »
Want Valuable Long Term Relationship Data? Enter an Escape Room!
Description: Ok imagine you are trying to get to know someone – someone with whom you might form a long term intimate relationship. Forget running your own version of a reality TV show (The Bachelor or the Bachelorette) but what sort of data would you want to gather as you contemplate moving forward with the… Read more »
Spotting Liars: New tools for assessing character (shhhh don’t tell your friends and relatives!)
Description: Can you tell when someone is lying to you? If you do a You Tube search on lie detection you will find a great many postings showing versions of the classic lie detection game where someone tells you several things about themselves one of which is a lie and you have to figure out… Read more »
Is There a Useful Psychology of Mass Shooters?
Description: As I contemplated whether to choose to blog on this particular topic I ran across the article linked below and while reading through it, for a number of associative reasons (I suspect), I was reminded of a song by Canadian Blues artist Lest Quitzau called Home on the Range. It contains the line “Welcome… Read more »
Can Courage be Develped, Trained, Encouraged, and/or Facillitated?
Description: Are you a courageous person? Do you know anyone who you would describe as courageous? Where do we need courage in our day-to-day lives? If courage is associated with dragon slaying and other sorts of battles, then perhaps we do not need it much these days. However, if courage is part of what it… Read more »
Bragging, Humblebragging, or Social Honesty: Which Tactic is Best?
Description: What do you think about people who brag? What about people to sneak their bragging into the conversation either by complaining (People give me such a hard time because I make them look bad) or by hardly masking it with humble statements (Why am I always asked to work on the most important assignments?)…. Read more »
Cranky, Crabble People: Maybe Surgical Brain Tuning Possible?
Description: You have very likely heard the story of Phineas Gage, a tale often told in introductory psychology classes to introduce a discussion of functions related to various portions of the brain and to the executive control functions related to the frontal lobes in particular (if not there is a section in the linked article… Read more »
Criminal Brains: Opportunties and ethical pitfalls of looking beyond minds
Description: Have you ever watched an episode of the TV show Criminal Minds which fictionally focusses on the activities of an FBI behavioral analysis unit that hunts psychopaths? In the show there are many discussions of the sorts of developmental histories that amplify some psychopathic behavioral tendencies and of the sorts of things that can… Read more »
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