Do you think you’re using the words “control group” correctly? You’re probably not. In fact, you’re probably also getting these terms wrong as well: “truth serum”, “lie detector”, “bystander apathy”, “personality type”, Oxytocin, “closure” and even the “scientific method”! In this episode I review some of the points made by Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues […]
Cell phones: they’re here and they’re not going away. So now it’s time to “stop worrying and learn to love them”. If you’re upset about how attracted teens are to their phones I’ll give you a few ideas that, hopefully, will make you feel better. After all, cellphones aren’t going away. Quite the opposite. They’re […]
A conversation is a conversation whether it happens in person or in a car, right? Well, wrong. You can only attend to so many things at a time. We’ll find out how a passenger in your car gives you subtle cues to what you need to attend to while you’re driving – something a person […]
Why do we find it so hard to put down our phones? I’ll give you 5 reasons drawn directly from psychological research on how we learn, how teenagers are strongly affected by reward, and how we are all drawn in by mystery. There is of course no easy answer for how to get teens to […]
I grew up eating baloney without ever giving a thought to where it came from. But psychology is all about reflecting on who you are, why you think the way you do and why you do what you do. So let’s explore our eating behavior: why do we think it’s weird or wrong when we […]
London needs help and only a person trained in psychology can fix this. There are just too many Londoners using their subway (the “tube”) and instead of standing side by side as they go up the escalator, people are doing what they always do – they stand single file on the right of the escalator […]
What comes to mind when you think “nursing home”? Not so good, right? Let’s change that. Let’s use what we learn from psychology to create exciting places for seniors to live. We’ve got the tools provided by Maslow’s Hierarchy and by Self Determination theory. Here’s one way we could revolutionize the “senior years”. Motivation Theories […]
Passengers on an airplane spring to action when a stewardess needs help – but a neighborhood in New York City does very little when a woman is attacked. What’s different ? How can we take what we learn from the airplane and apply it to the attack? Lecturing the neighborhood residents probably won’t […]
How can we use a little psychology to get you to slow down when you’re driving? You’d be surprised. Very often road signs like “Slow” or a posted speed limit of, say 20 mph does not work. Drivers go past these signs and nothing bad happens so after a while they’re ignored. We try […]
At the end of the year there are so many cues around us that tell us that we should be happy and that we should reflect on our lives. Humbug! Find out how not to fall prey to the holiday blues that are so common. A couple of key ideas from psychology will be applied […]
