Description: Occasionally during one of my lectures something unexpected would happen, nothing serious, but perhaps a construction crew renovating a neighboring classroom would start to use a jackhammer or power drill. In such situations I would typically comment that the event was NOT part of a Psychology experiment of the effects of annoying background noise… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Research Methods
Psychology and Covid-19: Research Ethics and Vaccine Development
Description: You cannot have missed media coverage of the current efforts underway to develop and produce a vaccine that will help people develop immunity to Covid-19. You may not have thought about the research ethics issues and questions that this multi-faceted development dash might involve. If you have had a Psychology course you know about… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: Breaking Psychological Research and Advice
Description: In recent weeks I have been blogging about and linking to articles about the Psychology of Covid-19. I will likely continue to do so as there is a lot of Psychology popping up in our current experience. As a teaching Psychologist and Psychology textbook author I believe strongly that paying attention to what Psychological… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: Now We Be Zoomers
Description: If you are enrolled at a college, university, school at almost any level or work somewhere you have probably not only heard of but are now regularly using Zoom. What is Zoom? Well it is a platform that makes it possible to set up online meetings for everything from a friend’s chat, to a… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: Stress and Change
Description: This is another installment in my efforts to talk about, and to get you to THINK about what the Covid-19 pandemic and our experiences of it can show us about the nature of human Psychology. What I am suggesting is that we can learn more about ourselves and our communities and about how we… Read more »
Psychology of COVID 19 Part 3: Statistical Overfocus
Description: Here is a simple question. How many times each day these days do you seek out and look at the latest COVID-19 statistics (locally, nationally or internationally)? OK, that is what you say but is that really true (be honest with yourself, you do not have to share that with anyone else)? What might… Read more »
Pets and Seniors’ Wellness: Are they Causally Related?
Description: I suspect you’ve probably heard that having pets is good for us. You probably have also heard the pets are particularly beneficial for seniors. However, how much do you know about how those benefits actually play out? That is, what does research tell us about the benefits that pets provide to seniors? Think a… Read more »
Two Types of Schizophrenia: A Matter of Grey Matter
Description: Think about this statement. We have drugs that can treat the symptoms of schizophrenia for many who struggle with it and that means that we have figured out what causes schizophrenia or at least how it works on the brain. Is this true? Is it a little bit true? What do you think? The… Read more »
Psychologists as Expert Witnesses: Ethics = Reliability + Validity
Description: What do Psychologists do in courtroom when they serve as expert witnesses? This is a huge and complicated topic so let’s focus in a bit. If a Psychologist has been asked by the court to assess an accused individual and if they use a measure or two in order to develop their opinion of… Read more »
Social Media and Smart Phone Use: We Need a LOT More Research
Description: I have posted previously on research related to the question of the impacts of social media and smartphone use on adolescent and emerging adult wellbeing. While some of the findings seem quite dire and while there is no debate about the increasing levels of anxiety and stress among emerging adults in recent years the… Read more »
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