Have psychologists recently found evidence for the existence of psychic ability? Last year, well-known psychologist Daryl Bem published an article called Feeling the Future in which he describes a number of studies, all of which provided support for a kind of phi phenomenon he calls “retroactive influence”. The research appeared in the Journal of Personality [...]
Did you know that you can apply your psychology skills to the development of effective websites? Meet one woman – Nathalie Nahai – who does exactly that and she has a background in not only psychology, but also Art, Physics and English Literature. She’s putting all those together to help people improve their websites and [...]
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
Here’s the list of this year’s most popular. Thanks to everyone for helping The Psych Files pass 5 million downloads!
Functional Fixedness When people have trouble coming up with alternative uses for everyday objects – or trouble thinking of everyday objects in new ways – we refer to that in psychology as “functional fixedness“. Creative people don’t tend to have this problem. Creative folks allow their minds to be “unbound” and to see things in [...]
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.
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?
Can science study love? Are we able to scientifically determine what romance is all about? There seem to be times, particularly when people hold strong beliefs, that we just don’t want to hear what scientists have to say. We talk a lot these days about the importance of objectivity, but are people – even scientists – capable of being objective? In this episode I’ll talk about the scientific impotence excuse. Another interesting cognitive bias we seem to carry around with us.
Some of the most popular self help books such as the Power of Positive Thinking and A Course in Miracles rely on references to god and religion. In this episode I add a few thoughts to the previous episode on how scientists view self-help books which rely on references to god.
