Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych Files

The printed word has been around for a long time. Bet you thought there was nothing new in how we put words together in a book or website.  Well, guess again. Researchers at Asymmetrica have drawn upon a tried and true memory strategy called "chunking" and applied it to - get this - the amount of white space between words.  Would we be able to improve literacy if we ever so slightly adjusted the a...

We often like it when things are explained to us clearly, but would you believe that sometimes it's better if you're just down-right confused? You could actually learn more if at some point in the learning process you feel like you don't know what's going on.  In part 2 of my interview with researcher and professor Jeremiah Sullins, we talk about much more you could learn if you spend a little tim...

Why do you vote the way you do? Have you read through all the various candidates position statements, or do you just kinda go with your "gut"? Jeremiah Sullins, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harding University has looked at this question in great depth and he's found some really interesting answers to this question.  I think you'll really enjoy hearing about his research into your voting be...

In a previous episode I talked about the kinds of dynamics that can occur in groups (social loafing, diffusion of responsibility) that can make them ineffective learning experiences as well as just not fun. In this episode I interview Dr. Karen Christian who has watched how many study groups in action and she has uncovered quite a few things that study groups need to do differently so that everybo...

How do you "apply a little psychology" to tough jobs like building an online community and to creating a product that people will want to use frequently? In part 2 of my interview with author and Feverbee founder Richard Millington we talk about two key theories from psychology: self-determination theory and Robert Cialdini's persuasion techniques.  I think you'll find these real world examples ve...

What do you do with a background in psychology? A lot of things. How about running an online community? I found Richard Millington, founder of Feverbee, talking about how he applies psychology to his business of helping organizations build strong, active online communities. As you've probably seen in your travels about the web, there are a lot of communities (such as those on Facebook) and sometim...

Is it possible that some people who we think are mentally ill are actually victims of demonic possession?  One psychiatrist says yes.  Another psychiatrist says no - believing this is true is a matter of not carefully thinking about what you see and hear from others.  In this episode I break down the claims made by Richard Gallagher and a counterpoint to Gallagher which was written by Steven Novel...

Do you think you're using the words "control group" correctly? You're probably not.  In fact, you're probably also getting these terms wrong as well: "truth serum", "lie detector", "bystander apathy", "personality type", Oxytocin, "closure" and even the "scientific method"!  In this episode I review some of the points made by Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues regarding scientific terms that you'...

Cell phones: they're here and they're not going away. So now it's time to "stop worrying and learn to love them". If you're upset about how addicted teens are to their phones I'll give you a few ideas that, hopefully, will make you feel better. After all, cellphones aren't going away. Quite the opposite. They're only going to get more powerful and more ubiquitous. The "pull" of the phone is irresi...

What is change blindness? How could you miss some of the most obvious things that change right in front of you? Millions of people watch a video of kids playing basketball and they miss the fact that a gorilla walks right through the scene.  A gorilla?  And people missed it?  Yup.  We often miss lots of things that happen right in front of us because our attention spans work in strange ways.  And...

Why do we find it so hard to put down our phones? I'll give you 5 reasons drawn directly from psychological theories on how we learn, how teenagers are strongly affected by reward and how we are all drawn in by mystery.  There is of course no easy answer for how to get teens to put down their phones but I'll share what I'm doing with my teenagers.  

I grew up eating baloney without ever giving a thought to where it came from.  But psychology is all reflecting on who you are, why you think the way you do and why you do what you do.  So let's explore our eating behavior: why do we think it's weird or wrong when we hear that in some cultures people  eat cat meat or insects or bats.  Is it really that different from eating cows and pigs?  How are...

What if you could study for your psychology test in 24 second sound bytes on your iPhone? Now you can. I recently contacted Parviv - the founder of an app called Clammr. Typically, people use Clammr to stay on top of the news, listen to podcasts or "top tweets" and other humorous audio clips. I thought it would make a great test prep tool. So check it out: download Clammr on your iPhone and search...

What if you could study for your psychology test in 24 second sound bytes on your iPhone? Now you can.  I recently contacted Parviv - the founder of an app called Clammr. Typically, people use Clammr to stay on top of the news, listen to podcasts or "top tweets" and other humorous audio clips. I thought it would make a great test prep tool. So check it out: download Clammr on your iPhone and searc...

London needs help and only a person trained in psychology can fix this. There are just too many Londoners using their subway (the "tube") and instead of standing side by side as they go up the escalator, people are doing what they always do - they stand single file on the right of the escalator so that people in a hurry can pass on the left. That's a fine social norm when there aren't that many pe...

What comes to mind when you think "nursing home"?  Not so good, right?  Let's change that.  Let's use what we learn from psychology to create exciting places for seniors to live.  We've got the tools provided by Maslow's Hierarchy and by the Self Determination theory.  Here's one way we could revolutionize the "senior years".

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 about these situations? 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 way the neighborhood is laid out to encourage...

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 signs say, "Drive as if your kids live here", but often that doesn't work.  How about...

Snapchat got a pretty bad rap over the past few years, but did you know that you actually can use this video messaging app in ways that really do help students see the applications of what their teachers are learning in their everyday lives.  In this episode I share my experiences using Snapchat with my psychology class.  Yes it has it's limitations, but it also has some strengths that I think are...