Description: OK your new dating site profile is almost ready to go, or your new professional network or social network posting is ready to go and all you have to do is add a profile picture. You have 12 pictures of yourself to choose from. Who should pick the one you post you or a… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Social Psychology
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 »
Performance Improvement Without Physical Practice? Dream On!
Description: Close your eyes and imagine yourself competing at the Olympics. Imagine the race, imagine what you need to do to compete well and then imagine winning a medal! OK nice daydream but you are probably not going to the Olympics and you may not even do the sport you were dreaming about doing. We… Read more »
Music To Sell Fries By?
Description: OK, this sounds like a weird question perhaps but what music would you predict would be most likely to get you to say “YES” to the question “would you like fries with that?” The picture below (if you recognize ED) gives the answer away but the more important questions are why does this work… Read more »
Theory of Mind in Preschoolers: What’s in the Brain?
Description: We know that preschoolers have trouble with (but are quite cute about) their understanding of other people’s thoughts, especially when other people’s thoughts are different than their own. If you show a 3.5 year old that a box of smarties (they are like M and M’s but are British/Canadian) contains short golf pencils rather… 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 »
Rorschach Redux
Description: A little while back I posted on an article that was looking at new ways to use the Rorschach “Inkblot” Test. In that post and in the accompanying article the discussion was somewhat skeptical about whether or not the Rorschach “Inkblot” Test has any valid place in current clinical, psychiatric or forensic practice. I… 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 »
Teen Risk-taking: Biology and ?
Description: So we all know that teenagers are reckless right? By that, we mean that teenagers take more risks in their day-to-day lives when making decisions about what to do compared to younger and older people. There is not a lot of debate about this and usually we ascribe this observation to biological/developmental causes such… Read more »
Resist the Self-Help Craze: Resistance is NOT Futile!
Description: Spank your inner child! Well that may be an extreme sentiment but what are we to make of the thriving and, at times, overwhelming self-help industry of books, websites, television shows etc etc? Is there no pushback? Well, yes, there is. Svend Brinkmann is a Danish psychologist and philosopher (nice combination!) who has written… Read more »
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