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Video: Object Permanence – Does Your Dog Have It?

Piaget’s concept of object permanence is essential to understand. But how did they study this idea among 1 year olds? Obviously children can’t tell you that they believe that something no longer exists when they can’t see it, so how do we know what is going on inside a child’s mind? How about this challenge: do animals also understand object permanence? If you’ve ever seen your cat or dog look under or around objects for a lost toy then yes – you’ve seen that they do understand object permanence.

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Episode 149: Date Rape: How Can We Prevent It?

Date Rape: here are some methods to effectively address this problem. You’ve probably heard of many times when people knew that someone was hurt or might be hurt and they did not help. How can we prevent that from happening? You may have learned about bystander apathy and the concept of diffusion of responsibility. But now what do we DO with what we know? How can we put that knowledge into action? Meet Dr. Vicky Banyard and see what she and her colleagues at the University of New Hampshire are doing with a program called Bring in the Bystander.

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EP 148 What Can We Do To End Gay Bullying in Schools?

What can we do to end bullying against gays? There is a shocking increase in the number of young homosexuals who are commit suicide. Many anti-bullying programs don’t work and in this episode I talk to Dr. Elizabeth J. Meyer of Concordia University about what can be done. No one should be bullied and we all need to care about those who are bullied to the point of considering suicide. Find out more in this episode.

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On Yawning, Swearing, Credit Cards and Sex: Psych Files Brief #1

In this first “Psych Files Brief” episode, we look at whether swearing actually reduces your sensation of pain (ever stub your toe?), whether or not vertical stripes actually do make you look thinner (no surprise – the answer is no), whether you’re more likely to run up that credit card when you’re feeling low, and why is it (and when is it) that yawns become contagious?

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Ep 146: Borderline Personality: What is it? Could Your Cell Phone Help Deal With It?

Borderline Personality Disorder is a difficult disorder to understand and treat. Briefly, people who suffer from BPD tend to have a heightened sensitivity to rejection. When they feel that they are being rejected they can react with strong feelings of anger. Their emotions can be very intense and vary widely during the day. This can also make their relationships very unstable.

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Episode 144: Existentialism, Humanism and The Drowsy Chaperone

  • March 25, 2011
  • 11 Comments

Americans spend billions of dollars on self-help products each year, but does someone else hold the answers to your questions about what your life is all about? Join me as I discuss a fascinating book called If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him!. We also see how a wonderful recent Broadway musical, The Drowsy Chaperone has some very intriguing things to say about life. Could it be that there is some existentialism in that musical? Listen to this episode to find out.

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Episode 143: EMDR – An Interview with Founder Francine Shapiro

  • March 19, 2011
  • 7 Comments

Curious about EMDR? Listen to this interview with the founder of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Dr. Francine Shapiro talk about EMDR and how it is different from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is an intriguing and unique type of therapy and if you want to learn more about it you’ve come to the right place.

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Episode 142: How To Make Jobs More Satisfying and Motivating

Do you have a dull job? Wonder how it can be made more motivating? That’s the challenge – how can we make jobs that are typically not much fun (like an assembly line job) more interesting to do? This is one of the challenges facing I/O psychologists and in this episode I discuss the Job Characteristics theory by Hackman and Oldham and apply it to assembly line jobs in China where your iPhone is made and where a record number of suicides have occurred over the past few years. Can we use job redesign to make such jobs more tolerable?

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Episode 141: Psychology Gets Smart: A New Kind of Lie Detector?

  • February 27, 2011
  • 3 Comments

You’ve probably heard that the so called “Lie Detector” test (the polygraph ) doesn’t actually detect when you’ve lied, but rather just takes some physiological measures from your body and these have to be interpreted by experts. Sometimes those experts make mistakes. Join me as I describe a psychological study that tested a new kind of “Lie Detector” – drawings. This study involved Agents, Missions, an Interception, and a mysterious “package”. This is psychology? You better believe it.

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