Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych Files

In episode 183 I talked about what critical thinking is and why it's important.  Now we talk about why it's so darn hard to teach and to use critical thinking in our everyday lives.  In this episode I'll discuss Dr. Daniel Willingham's advice to teachers on what they can do to effectively teach critical thinking - something that couldn't be more important in today's world where misinformation is a...

Depression and other mental health problems are often treated with medications which are called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and/or Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors.  How do they work? I'll show you in this brief video.  More free psychology resources at The Psych Files website and podcast: http://www. ThePsychFiles.com

Why does it concern psychologists that the Texas GOP platform recently opposed the teaching of critical thinking?  Most of us have been told since we were very young that critical thinking is very important.  Psychologists certainly agree and a lot of time spent in most psychology classes is spent learning how to think critically.  Why is it such a central part of our classes?  And here's a kicker...

Maybe you've heard of gamification, but how do you do it exactly?  How do you use game principles to increase people's motivation when they are doing everyday ordinary activities?  Find out in this episode of The Psych Files when I show you how I would gamify an ordinary uHaul drive.  Listen as I describe "uWin!".  I'll first describe some gamification ideas and then show you how I'd put them to w...

Let's talk sports psychology.  When you participate in a sport do you talk to yourself?  Do you try to "psych yourself up", or do you give yourself instructions on how to hold a part of your body or how much energy to exert or when to hold back?  This is the kind of self-talk that psychologists study and it's interesting to learn when you say these things to yourself and when they'll be most effec...

What is your body position revealing about you?  Some things are obvious - you probably know that crossed arms indicate a certain distrust.  There are also flirting gestures that I'll bet you think you know well (like women playing with their hair and men sticking out their chests), but what about your thumbs?  My thumbs?  Yes, you might well be revealing something about yourself by where you're p...

Do women who work in typically male dominated jobs "play down" their femininity in order to be gain more respect from their male co-workers?  In this episode we'll explore this stereotype threat as well as something you may not have heard of: the lipstick effect.  How do men and women change their appearance or their behavior during times of economic depression?  In this all-gender episode we look...

An audio in which I explain 5 study techniques that have solid research support.  These techniques will help students get better grades on their tests.

There is a lot of talk these days about a fascinating idea called embodied cognition.  What is it exactly?  In this lively interview I talk with two people who are actively looking into this question.  We discuss how the body and mind "talk" to each other when baseball players catch fly balls and what role psychology plays in the design of robots.

In this follow-up to episode 176 I discuss two more reasons why I believe some people either don't like or just distrust psychology: 1) the belief that it is not a science, and 2) the belief - created by the media - that psychologists make a lot of money for giving out common sense advice.  I hope you'll see that psychology is not unlike other sciences in that we study something extremely complex...

Why do so many people have strongly negative feelings about the field of psychology?  I think there are a handful of reasons and in this episode I talk about two of them: the so-called "self-esteem movement" and the "positive thinking" movement.  Are psychologists responsible for why "kids today" appear to be so self-centered? Do psychologists think that changing yourself is as simple as just chan...

In the market for a car?  Believe me: they have seen you coming and they are ready to use some sophisticated techniques to persuade you to buy.  Be prepared.  Watch this episode of The Psych Files and learn how the persuasion techniques described by psychologist Robert Cialdini are being used to change your attitudes and behavior to align with the goals of the salesman.  

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 and Social Psychology.  The article c...

Every once in a while a really cool tool comes along and I like to show everyone the fun I had with it.  In this video episode I show how I easily made an interactive image of a neuron and an interactive map containing videos and locations for some of the major studies in psychology.  Do you know where, for example, "Bobo doll" study was done?  How about the spot where "Marion Keech" received her...

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 the power of their online influence, which by the way, is the title of the...

A whole bunch of fascinating studies in this episode of The Psych Files!  I cover the "Red Dress Effect", what exactly we're looking for in the facial characteristics of our leaders, how dark rooms might make you more likely to cheat, and how "contagious yawning" really works.  Join me on this jaunt down some of the recent and fun research coming out of the fascinating field of psychology.

You probably know that sites like Facebook are using the information they have about you - like your age, gender and interests - to serve up ads that are most likely to appeal to you.  That's a little bit harmless and perhaps even helpful.  But how about the more subtle filtering that is going on that you may not be aware of?  Search engines are using information they have about you to show you ne...

In episode 168 I discussed reliability but the real test of a test's "metal" - or how confident you can be in the results - comes when you subject it to lots of validity tests.  You'll learn a lot about validity if you take a psychology class.  High validity is what separates the many fun-to-take but essentially meaningless tests you'll find on the web, and a truly solid test of your personality.

Can you tell your personality from what flavor ice cream you like?  There are lots and lots of so called Personality tests on the web.  How do you know when you've come across a good one?  For example, are the inner workings of your personality revealed in the playlists you have on your smartphone or mp3 device?  In this episode we take a look at the first thing you should demand from any test - r...

Guess What? Bad news: if you've ever been overweight and you're trying to lose weight it's even harder than you think.  Yikes.  Pretty de-motivating.  However, let's see what motivational psychologists would have to say about this.  How to keep from throwing up your hands at the whole effort. 

What do you reveal about yourself in the way you use the smallest and seemingly most insignificant words you use every minute?  That's the focus of Dr. James Pennebaker's fascinating book and one of the most interesting psychology books of 2011: The Secret Life of Pronouns.  If you're fascinated by language then you'll find this episode especially interesting.

What's going on with Psychology?  There have been a number of reports about poorly conducted or completely fraudulent research in the field.  Well, there's bad research in all fields, but psychology, which has through its history struggled for scientific credibility, is particularly sensitive to this issue and many psychologists have come out with strong recommendations to make sure that our resea...

Just about everyone finds poop disgusting right?  So who finds it not so disgusting?  Would you believe women in their 20s who are in the middle of their menstrual cycle, and who have motherhood as one of their goals in life?  Disgust has become quite a popular topic in psychology lately.  Join me as I discuss one of the more interesting studies that looks at how the intensity of our emotions can...

Do animals smile?  Do they feel emotions and if so how many kinds of feelings do they share with us? In this episode we also take a look at the probiotics in yogurt - how do they affect your thinking and do they might help protect you from stress.  It turns out that these probiotics increase the production of the neurotransmitter GABA which helps quiet down your neurons.  I also talk about the wor...

In episode 160 I discussed the first 2 ideas on how to spend your money wisely.  In this episode I'll talk about 4 more great ideas on how to get the most from your money and 2 things you have to be careful about.  Get the latest findings from positive psychologists on this episode of The Psych Files.