Description: Is it accurate? Does it plagiarize? Does it lie? Is it dangerous? Can people use t to cheat? Is it alive? Is it sentient? Is it human? Based on these questions, what am I thinking and writing about? I am thinking about ChatGPT and other “bots” that answer questions and write essays in response… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Social Psychology
Finding a Couples Therapist
Description: Imagine that you have decided that you or you and your partner need to see a therapist to help you figure out some aspect of your personal functioning or to help you and your partner figure out parts of your relationship that are not working. How would you go about doing that? A quick… Read more »
Having a Bad Day? Call a Friend!
Description: Imagine that you are having a bad day, though I hope you are not. Imagine that demands are rising, things are not going in your desired directions and your stress and anxiety levels are climbing up towards the roof. What would be one thing you could do that could lead to you feeling significantly… Read more »
Temperament: The Start of the Social/Emotional You
Description: Consider this quote from John Watson, one of the founders of Behaviorism: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist,… Read more »
Digital Fentanyl? Hmmmm….
Description: You cannot have missed the increasing level of discussion and concern regarding the possible impacts of social media use on the mental health of teens and youth in recent years. The available new coverage of this topic ranges widely from articles that seek out and dive into recent, population level research on social media… Read more »
Life and Health Are Collective Endeavors
Description: I was not intending to post three conceptually focused pieces (another one, a third one) when I sat down at my computer this week. By conceptual, I mean looking at articles that ask us if we are looking at or thinking about some aspect of human psychological functioning properly or whether a different conceptual… Read more »
Is “How Happy Are You” The Right Question?
Description: How happy are you? If you are not as happy as you would like to be what can you do to fix that? Is how happy you are an important question? If not, what else should we be thinking about or working on? These questions started out simple and then got fuzzier and more… Read more »
Resolve to Resolve SMARTer
Description: I have really never been one to make New Years Resolutions. That said I have, over the years, noted the sense of renewal and new starts that accompany the annual calendar turnover. Some of that is a general part of the year as the fall seems to contain a focused slide down to the… Read more »
Our Minds On Cryptocurreny
Description: I will freely admit that I am completely unable to understand (and frankly not very interested in) crypto currency. That said, I AM rather interested in how it was that so many people got deeply into things like FTX (Google it and Ponzi schemes). There is a lot of talk from the perspective of… Read more »
Looking Beyond Political Affiliation to Predict Engagement With Conspiracy Theories
Description: Maybe you are not interested in having another look at the question of why it might be that some people are more receptive to the conspiracy theories proffered by the QAnon bunch but, despite their seeming aversion to it, science can help us understand them a bit better. So, take a moment and consider… Read more »