Description: Think of a time when you were doing something really boring (perhaps in a lecture or at a family gathering) and see if you can think about a time in one of those situations where your mind wandered and you lost track of what was going on around you, perhaps to the extent that… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Language-Thought
Timing of Recovery After Sleep Deprivation: Longer than You Think!
Description: If you pulled a couple of almost all-nighters completing a term paper and then stayed up and got up early preparing for and then writing several final exams how many good nights’ sleeps would you need to have before you would be comfortable taking on the 10-hour drive home for holidays? If you said… Read more »
Anxiety and Entrenched Habits: Treatability
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 »
Nobel Prize Baseball: Thinking, Fast and Slow Goes to the Show
Description: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (both psychologists) won the Nobel Prize in economics for their work on biases in human decision making in 2002. More recently, Kahneman wrote a book entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow in which he describes, in detail, the different systems we use when we are thinking quickly and “instinctively” as… Read more »
A Gift Giving Pop Quiz!
Description: Ok, at the risk of incurring your anger for not having passed these secrets along sooner (it is Christmas Eve as I write this), did you know that there is Psychological research into what makes something a good or at least better present and the differences between what gift givers think is the answer… Read more »
Psychology of Covid-19: Is Your Mind Wandering More?
Description: You have very likely seen, heard or read a multitude of things lately about the state of stress and anxiety these days in general and about YOUR state of stress and anxiety as we head into the Covid winter before the vaccine spring that we hope will be coming along. However, putting stress and… Read more »
Psychology of Online Shopping: Traps and Pitfalls
Description: I bet, or hope, that you are doing most of your holiday shopping online this year. I also bet that most of what come to mind if you are asked to think about things that retailers do to nudge you to by more involve “real” bricks and mortar stores such as small quantities of… Read more »
What is Your Brain For? Maybe NOT for Thinking!
Description: When you experience a flair of stress or anxiety what is your first thought? I suspect it is some version of “What is going on in my world that is stressful or challenging”. Especially these days with a raging pandemic, that is not a bad first thought as it can lead to problem focused… Read more »
Pattern Separation and Human versus Animal Intelligence
Description: What do you know about how memory works? You likely have a basic understanding of how information comes in through or senses (via a very short term sensory store), pauses in working memory (if we work on it) and perhaps eventually gets processed into long term memory. Does that take you bac to a… Read more »
Is it Exercise or Nature That is Good For You? Or is it Both?
Description: Imagine you volunteer for a research study. As part of the study you are shown a pair of pictures (two men or two women) and you are asked to pick the one that is the most attractive. After you make your choice you are handed the picture you chose and asked to explain why… Read more »
Books for Success!
