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: Social Influence
Is Evil Born or Made or What?
Description: I have posted about the Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, Narcissism and Psychopathy) before which suggests how some poor or bad behavior in others might be accounted for, but what about large-scale evil? An ongoing question has been to wonder what array of circumstances, conditions, and characteristics come together to produce truly evil people such a… Read more »
Psychology and Socialization: The Individual and (versus) the Social
Description: Psychology has a recurrent problem. Well, perhaps, it may be better to say that western (North American) Psychology, despite its commitment to empiricism and scientific objectivity, is a product of its culture. Try this thought on for size: Western Psychology strongly prefers to see the individual (singular person) as its unit of analysis. One… Read more »
APA, Gillette, #MeToo, and Toxic Masculinity
Description: Have you seen the ad recently produced by the Gillette company? Their company tag line is “The Best a Man can Get” and in their ad they argue against toxic masculinity and that recent social change movements such as #MeToo have initiated changes in our thinking about masculinity. Gillette’s ad states that things have… Read more »
If all of your friends jumped off a bridge….. Groups, Conformity and Social Norms
Description: Do you remember a time when you and your friends did something a bit ill-advised or a bit sketchy and when your parents asked why you went along you said, “because all my friends were doing it”? And, of course, one or the other or both of your parents said …. what? …. “if… 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 »
Rewards and Behavior: Of Pets and People
Description: You may have heard someone somewhere bemoaning their observation that some people treat their pets like they are human beings (sneaking them into restaurants etc.) But, have you heard anyone bemoan the opposite – treating humans like pets (and I am NOT thinking here of consensual dog collar wearing OR examples of abuse). Here… Read more »
Behavioral Economics and Loss Aversion or Maybe Something Else?
Description: What is Behavioral Economics? Well it is the area (of Economics) in which a Psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, won a Nobel prize in 2002 for his work (in Psychology) on how human beings make decisions about money and about other things. It is the area of study that looks at the ways in which we… Read more »
Mindfulness and Social Exclusion: Overcoming the Impact of Being Banish’d
Description: Think back (perhaps back to your grade school days) and think of a time or situation where you got left out by your peers, where you did not get invited to a birthday party or asked to play in a recess game. How did that make you feel? Does that sort of thing not… Read more »
Texting Research: Way Beyond Good versus Evil
Description: Quick! Answer this question off the top of your head: Is texting good or bad? Well, assuming your mind did not leap to issues arising from presidential tweets your yes or no answer likely reflected your personal preferences regarding texts or perhaps the Psychological researcher in you suggested that the question was too simplistic… Read more »
Books for Success!
