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 help. Can we do anything to the … Read More
Ep 252: How Psychology Gets You To Slow Down While Driving
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 to make it more personal with … Read More
Ep 242: The Psychology of Attractiveness: An Interview with Rob Burriss
One of the most popular topics in Psychology is attraction: why are we romantically attracted (or not) to each other? Whenever anyone asks me about this topic, or they ask me for other psychology podcasts in addition to The Psych Files. I send them over to the Psychology of Attractiveness podcast, hosted by Rob Burriss. Rob has been hosting this … Read More
Ep: 238: A Robot’s Gender, Act Like A Girl and Be A Man
Does it matter if a robot looks male or female? You might not think so, but are we perpetuating stereotypes if if we create a robot that looks “feminine” to help the elderly aren’t we continuing the stereotype that these types of jobs are “women’s” jobs? If we create “masculine” looking robots to work outside and do adventurous, heavy lifting … Read More
Ep 237: What is Misophonia? More on La Cage, Empathy, and the Milgram Studies
Does the sound of other people’s mouth noises really drive you crazy? Honestly, it does to me. Things like lip smacking, swallowing, cracking and crunching really annoys me. If it annoys you too then you’re not alone. Learn about misophonia in this episode. Also, a little more about my experiences playing Albin/Zaza in the musical La Cage Aux Folles, more … Read More
Ep 236: My Cross-Dressing Experience in La Cage Aux Folles
I was recently cast as “Albin” in the musical La Cage Aux Folles and it has given me the unique opportunity to have to learn how to act more effeminate and to cross dress. As a psychologist who obsesses about the “psychology of everyday life” you can imagine how I’ve been thinking about what there is to learn from this … Read More
Ep: 231: Multiple Personalities and Tips on Getting People to Help
Is there such a thing as a person having multiple personalities? What about Sybil and “All About Eve” – did they really have multiple personalities? The idea makes for great headlines and fascinating talk shows, but what’s the real story? I talk about that in this episode of The Psych Files along with giving tips on how to maximize the … Read More
Ep 221: The Facebook Study on Your Emotions: Ethical or Not?
You may have heard that Facebook manipulated the content of user’s New Feeds during January of 2012 so that some users saw more positive posts than others, while other Facebook users saw more negative posts. They interpret this as an indication of Social Contagion on a massive scale (almost 700,000 Facebook users were part of the study). How did this … Read More
Ep 219: Mental Health Professionals: Why So Liberal?
Surveys find that psychologists tend to align themselves with a liberal political orientation. Why is that? Are liberal-minded people drawn to human service professions or is there something about working in human services that causes people to become more liberal in their political views? In this episode I propose a few ideas that I think explains why mental health professionals … Read More
Ep 208: The Elaboration Likelihood Model in Less Than 2 Minutes
The elaboration likelihood model developed by Petty and Cacciopo is a complicated name for a not too complicated idea about how people can be persuaded. In this under 2 minute video I explain the key idea. Get All of My Mnemonics and Get Better Grades with my Psych Mnemonics App!
