Description: What do horses that seem to be able to spell and do math, grade school children, and stereotypes of poor people or smokers have in common? The Pygmalion Effect. Well that is not enlightening but what about expectancy effects and not their own expectancies but expectancies or assumptions that other have about them? How… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Research Methods
Understanding and Overcoming Pain and Anxiety: FAAH-OUT!
Description: A big part of the current opioid crisis that does not perhaps get the level of attention it deserves is that many people caught up in it got there through their experiences and issues with pain management. Pain experience and pain management is a very complex area of psychological and medical research and a… Read more »
Animals and Emotions: How Do You Feel About THAT?
Description: OK, quick, without any reflection, answer these questions: Do animals have emotions? Or do they have the same emotional range and depth that we do? If you are like most people you probably hesitated a bit even if you decided to answer yes to either of those questions. Why hesitate? Well, maybe your feelings… Read more »
Expressive Writing and PTSD: (W)ri(gh)ting Yourself, a Meta-Analysis
Description: Have you ever heard that writing might be good for you? I do not mean that taking English classes is good for you (though it might be) but rather that writing about anything from past traumatic life events to future hopes and aspirations might actually not only help you cope with past trauma or… Read more »
Want to Feel Better? Write Yourself a Park Prescription
Description: Life is not a walk in the park. Have you heard that saying? It is usually taken to suggest that life, at times at least, is not easy, but what if we put it slightly differently by saying that life should include regular walks in the park. What about THAT might be good for… Read more »
Do Sex Differences Mean There Are Male and Female Brains?
Description: Book titles such as Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus (John Gray) suggest that there are some fundamental differences between men and women. What might that hypothesis or sentiment suggest about the brains of men and women? Well, the idea that, at the level of the brain, men and women are… Read more »
Suicide Prediction Algorythms: Possible? Ethical? Essential?
Description: Suicides are preventable, but, ….. predicting suicide attempts so that timely assistance and support can be offered is incredibly difficult. Part of the problem, from an epidemiological perspective, is that suicide is a statistically rare event (annually 11 per 100,000 per year in Canada currently) but still, 10 people a day commit suicide in… Read more »
Biology and Mental Illness: Why No Cures Yet?
Description: We have drugs that treat mental disorders like schizophrenia and depression so do we have cures for those disorders? One of the reasons given for the focus shift taken by Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and others to Positive Psychology (optimizing things for everyone) is that we have addressed mental illness and can move on…. Read more »
Can We Study Luck?
Description: Are you a lucky person? Are there regular situations where you do or do not do things like buy a raffle ticket or get a job where you do or do not act based on your beliefs about how lucky you are? Such thoughts come up at least once and a while for most… Read more »
Engagement or Connectedness: Which works (matters) for you?
Description: If you have been anywhere near a post-secondary education institution in the past 10 years you cannot have missed overhearing discussions or seeing programs aimed at or investigating student engagement – as in, student engagement in the institute, college or university and/or in their studies. It is considered so important that it is measured… Read more »
Books for Success!
