Description: I will not even ask whether you know what anxiety is, of course you do, especially given how much experience we have all had with it recently. Have you also heard about the Yerkes-Dodson Law? Basically, it says that for most tasks that we take on, a certain amount of stress increases our performance… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Health Psychology
Psychology of Covid-19: How to Wait in Lines
Description: How good are you at waiting in line? Would your answer be different if you were thinking of waiting in line to pay for your groceries as compared to waiting in what, these days, passes for an ill-defined virtual line that will determine when you get your vaccination for Covid-19? Culturally, the British are… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: Re-emerging and Adaptation
Description: No matter how you spent the past year I suspect that it was different than the previous 5, 10, or many many more years and that the biggest difference was the nature and extent of your social contacts. Perhaps you got really good at zoom (despite the force personal appearance fixations it can produce);… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: The Vaccine Dilemma Game
Description: Social psychology often involves examining the social give and take between individuals and at some of the ways that individuals may bias their perceptions or out and out act in their own interest at the expense of other’s outcomes. This work includes things like the Just World Hypothesis (e.g., maybe people who flaunt social… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: Pandemic Negative Thought Patterns
Description: Try this statement on for size. The way we think, the way we focus our attention, the way we organize and reflect upon our thoughts are, in large part, best thought of as adaptations to the world we are living in (the physical AND the social world). Does that make sense? OK, now, how… Read more »
Video Games, Social Media and Mental Health: Research Debates on Screen Time Continue
Description: The debates and the research focused upon the impacts of video gaming and social media use on developing children and youth are heated and ongoing. The primary difficulty in sorting out the effects of video gaming and social media use is tied up in the comprehensive nature of their uptake in the population. As… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: Hitting the Pandemic Wall
Description: Have you heard of something called the General Adaptation system (GAS)? Hans Selye (1907-1982) working at McGill University in Montreal was trying to find a model with which he could use rats to study the impact of longer-term exposure to moderate to high levels of stress. What he came up with as a rat… Read more »
Psychology of Covid: Reasoning with Unreasonable People About Vaccination
Description: How do you deal with someone who you believe is completely unreasonable? Well, one possible answer that makes a lot of sense is simply to not deal with them at all. Who needs the stress and the headaches associated with trying to take on an unreasonable person and try to get them to BE… Read more »
A Check on Positivity: Sometimes Grumpy is Good
Description: How important and how valuable in terms of long-term wellbeing are mindfulness and positivity? Well, if you have been paying just half-attention to well-ness buzz in the media in recent years you will probably say that positivity and mindfulness are two of the corner stones of success and wellbeing. I don’t really want to… Read more »
Psychology of COVID-19: Stress and Vaccine Efficacy
Description: If you have taken an introductory Psychology course that included a section on stress you may be aware that ongoing stress can have a negative impact upon your immune system. Those with sustained moderate to high levels of stress are at increased risk for things ranging from colds to cancer as a result of… Read more »
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