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The Cognitive Power of Partisanship
As the current U.S. presidential campaign richly illustrates, “motivated reasoning” powerfully sways how we view reality.Researchers have long known that people’s gut-level liking or disliking of a...
View ArticleSocial Psychology at the First Presidential Debate
We social psychologists have reeled on a couple recent occasions over news reports of unreplicated studies, including one of my favorites—the pencil-in-the-teeth versus mouth of how manipulated facial...
View ArticleBilly Bush and The Power of the Situation: To Get Along, Go Along?
Amid the uproar over leaked audio of Donald Trump’s boasting about his sexual predation, there was a secondary story—the complicity of interviewer Billy Bush, who appears to snicker approvingly at...
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Is Seasonal Affective Disorder a Folk Myth?
Doing science takes humility—an awareness of our vulnerability to error and an openness to new perspectives. If nature, in response to our questioning, doesn’t behave as our ideas predict, then so much...
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From Transgressor to Trailblazer: A Story of Redemption and Heroism
Sometimes adversities become blessings. A defeat sparks a new resolve that produces a champion. A setback seeds a success. An adversity awakens a passion and purpose. (For me, the silver lining of...
View ArticleClinton and Trump Supporters Unite: Go Cubs!
It's a hard scene to imagine: immigrant-despising Donald Trump supporters greeting women’s rights-supporting Hillary Clinton supporters with high fives.But it’s happening, virtually over Facebook and...
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A Top 100 Psychology Blog!
Thanks to Feedspot for selecting Talk Psych as one of the Top 100 Psychology Blogs on the web!
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Learning Tips for Students
What can students do to efficiently learn and remember? Cognitive science offers answers, say Adam Putnam, Victor Sungkhasettee, and Henry Roediger in their new essay, “Optimizing Learning in College.”...
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Teaching Tips for Research Methods Instructors
My esteemed fellow Worth Publishers authors, Gary Lewandowski, Natalie Ciarocco, and David Strohmetz (authors of The Scientist Within: Research Methods in Psychology) will be discussing the teaching of...
View ArticleTalk Psych with David Myers is moving!
David Myers' blog will soon move to a Web site hosted by Macmillan Learning. You will still see the same great psychology content written by David Myers, now simply posted to his publisher's blog...
View ArticleDoes Donald Trump Merely Express Widely Shared Attitudes, or Does He Also...
At 10:41 p.m. on election night, as the trajectory became apparent, New York Times writer Nick Confessore lamented thatIt feels like we are at a historic turning point not only for our country, but...
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Super Grit
Success, as Angela Duckworth emphasizes in her research and writings, grows from talent and grit: Highly successful people are often conscientious, determined, and doggedly energetic.And then there is...
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Misinformation and Education in a Post-Truth World
For us educators, few things are more disconcerting than the viral spread of misinformation. Across our varying political views, our shared mission is discerning and teaching truth, and enabling our...
View ArticleSocial Psychology’s Insight on the Deep Divide
Today’s America is more polarized than in any recent decade. A record 77 percent perceive the nation as divided, reports Gallup. For the first time in Pew survey history, most Republicans and Democrats...
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Religious Engagement Predicts Health—But Why?
“Hundreds of studies” have found an association between religiosity and health or well-being, observes Harvard biostatistician and epidemiologist, Tyler VanderWeele in a forthcoming chapter. But “only...
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Neurocore
Walking down the hall to my Holland (Michigan) ear doctor’s office, I pass an office of Neurocore Brain Performance Centers, a company started in nearby Grand Rapids and whose website declares that...
View ArticleDo the Media Lead us to Fear Terrorists Too Little—or Too Much?
Speaking to military personnel on February 6th, President Trump lamented that terrorist attacks are “not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report...
View ArticleCheering Their Ears Out Redux
My friend and psychology colleague, Sue Frantz, alerted me to the pride the University of Kansas athletic department took this week in setting a Guinness World Record—with a 130.4 decibel crowd roar...
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Is Our Past Experience “All There?”
If the hardiest weed in our cognitive neuroscience garden is that “we only use 10 percent of our brains,” the next hardiest weed is this myth: “All our past experience is ‘in there’ and potentially...
View ArticleMusings on Sports and Life
For us college basketball enthusiasts, March Madness is here! As their fan, I was delighted when my college’s men’s and women’s teams progressed through the NCAA Division III tournament‘s first two...
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