Parts of the Neuron Explained with ThingLink
Have you checked out ThingLink yet? Pretty cool tool. Check out what I did with it by putting tabs onto a neuron image. Each tab pops open a YouTube video
Ep 171 Psych Files Brief #5: The Allure of Red Dresses, Telling Jokes to Babies, and What a President Looks Like
A whole bunch of fascinating studies in this episode of The Psych Files! I cover the “Red Dress Effect“, what exactly we’re looking for in the facial characteristics of our leaders, how dark rooms might make you more likely to cheat, and how “contagious yawning” really works. Join me on this jaunt down some of […]
Ep 170: Is the Web Making You Narrow-Minded?
You probably know that sites like Facebook are using the information they have about you – like your age, gender and interests – to serve up ads that are most likely to appeal to you. That’s a little bit harmless and perhaps even helpful. But how about the more subtle filtering that is going […]
Ep: 169 – Validity – How Can You Tell a Good Test from a Bad One?
In episode 168 I discussed reliability but the real test of a test’s “mettle” – or how confident you can be in the results – comes when you subject it to lots of validity tests. You’ll learn a lot about validity if you take a psychology class. High validity is what separates the many fun-to-take […]
Ep 168: Reliability – the Foundation of Any Good Test
The Importance of Reliability in Personality Test In this episode, as human curiosity drives us to self-discovery, we delve into personality tests’ reliability. Our innate curiosity pushes us to understand the very essence of who we are. This profound journey to self-discovery has led to the rise of personality tests, tools that profess to shine a […]
Ep: 167: The Fat Trap – How Not to Get Discouraged About Difficulty Losing Weight
Guess What? Bad news: if you’ve ever been overweight and you’re trying to lose weight it’s even harder than you think. Yikes. Pretty de-motivating. As psychologist Matthew Edlund wrote recently, Weight: Why Simple Answers Won’t (Can’t) Work. However, let’s see what motivational psychologists would have to say about this. How to keep from getting too […]
Ep: 166: The Secret Life of Pronouns – an Interview with James Pennebaker
What do you reveal about yourself in the way you use the smallest and seemingly most insignificant words you use every minute? That’s the focus of Dr. James Pennebaker‘s fascinating book and one of the most interesting psychology books of 2011: The Secret Life of Pronouns. If you’re fascinated by language then you’ll find […]
Ep 165 (video): Psychological Research Under Fire: What Can We Do About It?
What’s going on with Psychology? There have been a number of reports about poorly conducted or completely fraudulent research in the field such as this one that appeared in the New York Times. Well, there’s bad research in all fields, but psychology, which has through its history struggled for scientific credibility, is particularly sensitive to […]
Ep 164: What’s So Disgusting About Poop?
Just about everyone finds poop disgusting right? So who finds it not so disgusting? Would you believe women in their 20s who are in the middle of their menstrual cycle, and who have motherhood as one of their goals in life? Disgust has become quite a popular topic in psychology lately. Join me as I […]
Ep 163: Psych Files Brief #4: Animals Smiling, Yogurt De-Stressing, and the Psychology of Success
Do animals smile? Do they feel emotions and if so how many kinds of feelings do they share with us? In this episode we also take a look at the probiotics in yogurt – how do they affect your thinking and do they might help protect you from stress. It turns out that these probiotics […]