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.

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• 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

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

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It is time to take a look at the cars we drive and find out what they say about ourselves - our personalities and our lifestyles. This week on The Psych Files.

Many thanks to Frank Fasano for doing the interviews with the many fine folks who come to the Rhinebeck Antique Auto Show.

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How do you really raise self esteem? This week we take a look at all the talk about young people, narcissism and the self esteem movement. Then we answer the question: how do you raise self esteem?

Listen to episode 9 on self esteem and narcissism.

Show Notes

Quick Summary of major points:

How self esteem grows:

1. Doing well (achieving your goals), on
2. Tasks that you value (are important to you)

How to give effective praise:

1. Be sincere
2. Don’t praise too frequently
3. Be specific - help your child learn what strategies lead to success
4. Be careful about attributing success to “smarts” - that can backfire. Try to focus on the effort that went into success

Links mentioned in this episode:

• You’ll love the movie The Incredibles. Look for the various references to self esteem throughout the movie.
• DVD review of The Incredibles which discusses the references to self esteem.
• Another review of The Incredibles which also points out the references to the controversy over self esteem.
• Here’s the link to the article entitled, “How Not To Talk to your Kids” by Po Bronson which addresses the self esteem issue.
• Here’s the link to Po Bronson’s great book “What Should I Do With My Life?” on Amazon: What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

Blog of the Week

Here’s a link to the very interesting blog I mentioned that appeared on the Random Yak also about self esteem.

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