Trying to get in shape and lose weight? What’s the psychology behind getting in shape? Well, first forget the psychobabble. In this episode of The Psych Files podcast I examine two established theories of human motivation - goal setting and expectancy theory. If you’ve tried the Atkins diet, the south beach diet some other low carb diet plan or even (yikes!) a lemonade diet, then it’s time to try something different - get into your head just a little bit and see what’s going on in there. Join me for a different perspective on weight loss, exercise and fitness.

Resources on Motivation and Getting in Shape

• I highly recommend the Fitness Rocks podcast which is hosted by Dr. Monte Ladner. Excellent podcast. I’m a subscriber.
• I mentioned that I was getting excellent advice from a nutritionist on how to eat healthily. Jeanne Cooper practices Integrative Nutrition. Highly recommended.
• Here’s an interesting article that appeared in UCLA’s Daily Bruin entitled, "Food restriction not effective long-term weight-loss solution". This is the one that mentions how some students are trying a lemonade diet to lose weight, not understanding that severe calorie restriction results in the body going into "starvation mode " and actually results in less weight loss. Here’s a quote from that article:
  

  Not eating enough food may become a problem because of metabolism decrease. When consuming fewer calories, the body thinks it is in starvation mode, so it wants to hold on to whatever calories it can and in fact will store them even more efficiently, said Dana Ellis, a cardiac dietitian at the UCLA Medical Center. As a result of food deprivation, the body starts to store every calorie as fat, according to an article by Sheri Barke, a dietitian at the UCLA Arthur Ashe Health and Wellness Center.

• You may have heard of the young man who is using the Nintendo Wii program called Wii Fitness to lose weight. Check out his site. Interesting if nothing else.

Check out below the voicethread I created to explain exactly how expectancy theory works using weight loss as an example. Click on the image below to listen and watch (use your mouse to move around) or go to this image on expectancy theory at the voicethread website. Sign up (it 's free) and you can comment on this image as well!

Popularity: 1% [?]

 

 The Psychology of Getting in Shape [29:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 1% [?]

Equity and the lack of fairness strike again! What would happen if you were suddenly (even temporarily) moved to an office (or dorm room) that was smaller than the one you’re in now? Would you be less productive? Less satisfied? I bet you would. Let’s see how this was studied in a classic field experiement by psychologist Jerry Greenberg.

[display_podcast]

Resources For This Episode

• Opps! Around 19 minutes into the podcast I say that you have to “observationally define” a smile. I meant “operationally define” a smile. Sorry ’bout that. I’ll try to fix that tonite.
• Greenberg, J. (1988), “Equity and workplace status: a field experiment”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 73 pp.606-13.
• Here is the link to my previous episode on the concept of Equity.
• Here is the link to my previous episode on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

Popularity: 39% [?]

 

 Standard Podcast [30:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 39% [?]

Time for a little fun. I know you’ve asked yourself this question: why do people engage in those dangerous sports like hang gliding, bungee jumping and rock climbing? Would you believe it might have something to do with neurotransmitters and something called Monoamine Oxidase? In this video episode we learn about Sensation Seekers. Come along for the ride.

[display_podcast]

• Darn! The video I made with the chasing snow mobiles using the Stuntman video game didn’t come out looking so good in this podcast. In case you want to see the video, I’ve embedded it below. I’m still thinking about ways to use machinima for educational purposes. If you’ve got any ideas let’s talk about it.
• 
  Click on this image to use the drag-and-drop activity to demonstrate neurotransmitter movement across the synapse.

Resources for this Podcast

• Personality Psychology website at Arcadia. This site has a lot of great resources on personality. Highly recommended.
• Take the sensation-seeking scale here.
• Lots of resources on personality can be found at the Personality Pedagogy site.
• Good article here from the HealthyPlace website on monoamine oxidase and it’s role in depression.
• A nice overview of Sensation Seeking can be found in Motivation Theories and Pinciples 5th edition by Robert Beck.
• Biopsychology by John Pinel has some excellent illustrations and extensive explanations on how neurotransmitters work.

Media Resources for this Episode

• Thanks to the band 3Kisses for allowing me to use “It’s Not About You” for the soundtrack to my extreme snowmobile chase.
• Extreme Bungee on YouTube.
• Here’s the YouTube video showing the extreme hang gliding video featured in this episode.
• The snowmobile chase machinima was made with the video game Stuntman: Ignition
• Here’s a link to one of the many machinima sites.
• I created the neurotransmitter animations using Adobe Flash

Technorati: extreme sports, neurotransmitters, dopamine, serotonin, sensation seeking

Del.icio.us Tags:
sensation seeking, monoamine oxidase, neurotransmitters

Popularity: 100% [?]

 

 Episode 35: The Psychology of Extreme Sports [21:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 100% [?]

You’ve probably heard about the battle between intrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Well, here’s a new competitor to think about: the concept of the Motivation to Learn. What does this idea have to add to the debate about the best way to get kids to read? What does it have to do with the Bourne Supremacy? Find out this week on The Psych Files.

[display_podcast]

Resources for this Podcast

• Link to the book: Looking in Classrooms by Good and Brophy on the Allyn and Bacon site. And the same book on Amazon: Looking in Classrooms (9th Edition)
• Link to the book The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children
• The Think Kids site
• The Center for Collaborative Problem Solving site.
• The book by Ellen Langer that contains the example regarding birth control is not Mindfulness (although that is one of her books), but rather this book by her: The Power of Mindful Learning

Notes

Motivation to Learn: Why read? Because learning is worthwhile, important

People are naturally drawn to:

• Puzzles – what would happen if you…went outside your spacecraft without a suit (“Moonraker” vs. “2001″)? Dropped a feather and a brick from the same height? If you were swinging a weight on the end of a string and the string broke. Everyday example: the “Bourne Supremacy”. The concept of the movie pulls you in: you wake up, don’t know where you are or who you are, yet you seem to have the ability to kill people, and people seem to be out to kill you – why?
• Interesting questions – Why did the dinosaurs die out?
• Problems – the scene from “Apollo 13”: “We gotta make one of these… out of this”
• Open-ended questions: instead of asking “Can you…”, ask “How could you..”. Langer author of “Mindfulness”: Can you make a birth control pill that could be inhaled through the nose? Vs. How could you make a birth control pill that could be inhaled through the nose?
• Contradictions: “Opposites attract” vs. “Birds of a feather flock together”
• Controversy – Did we really land on the moon? Examine the angles of the shadows, etc.
• Suspense – Check out futurelabs http://www.futurelab.org.uk/ – astronauts running out of air http://www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/space_mission_ice_moon/
• Guessing (with no fear of public embarrassment)

Corny joke of the week: Q: Why will you never starve in the desert? A: Because of all the sand which is there!

[email_link]

Popularity: 61% [?]

 

 Standard Podcast [34:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 61% [?]

Equity: the battle cry of childhood - It’s not fair - tends to follow us throughout life. Can it affect job satisfaction? Let’s take a look at how fairness, or the lack therof, plays itself out in the work place. Get ready for a little math. Math? In psychology? You’ll see.

[email_link]

Popularity: 33% [?]

 

 Listen to Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 33% [?]