Why are Social Psychologists Mostly Liberals?
Social psychology’s progressivism has been no secret. Our values inform our interests in topics such as prejudice, sexism, violence, altruism, and inequality.Still, I was a bit stunned, while attending...
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Crisis or Common Sense? Two Ways to Approach Scientific Replication
This past weekend, I gave myself an odd birthday present. I entered an ultramarathon. If you’ve read my posts, you know I like to run. For my birthday, I wanted to run 100 miles as fast as I could....
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To Follow the Data is Neither Liberal nor Conservative
My last blog essay reported surveys that show social psychologists are mostly political liberals. But I also noted that “To our credit, we social psychologists check our presumptions against data. We...
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The Internet is Transforming Culture
I am just back from a fourth visit to China, where I enjoyed generous hospitality and have again spoken to colleagues and students in China’s fast growing social psychology field. My task was to speak...
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The Reproducibility Project and Textbook Reporting of Psychological Science
In response to the big “Reproducibility Project” news that only 36 percent of a sample of 100 psychological science studies were successfully replicated, psychologists have reassured themselves that...
View ArticlePhantom Breast Syndrome
Phantom limb sensations are one of psychology’s curiosities. Were you to suffer the amputation of a limb, your brain might then misinterpret spontaneous activity in brain areas that once received the...
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Distinctiveness Defines Identity
Writing in the August, 2015, Scottish Banner, University of Dundee historian Murray Watson puzzled over having “failed to find a satisfactory answer” for why Scots’ Scottish identity is so much...
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Some Fans Blindsided: A Future Classic Example for Psychology Teachers?
Thursday night’s Buffalo Bills versus New York Jets football game was lampooned for its red and green uniforms. “Christmas pjs” in the NFL?But for “colorblind” people there was a bigger problem. As...
View ArticleStill Fearing the Wrong Things?
“So, what do you make of this?,” asked the woman in the airplane seat next to me this week, as she pointed to an article about corporations cancelling meetings in Paris in response to last week’s...
View ArticleHappiness Doesn’t Affect Health?
“Happiness doesn’t bring good health,” headlines a December 9 New York Times article. “Go ahead and sulk,” explain its opening sentences. “Unhappiness won’t kill you.”Should we forget all that we have...
View ArticleThe Politics of Fear
Recent presidential debates offered a consensus message: be afraid. “They’re trying to kill us all,” warned Lindsay Graham. “America is at war,” echoed Ted Cruz. “Think about the mothers who will...
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Who Thinks Our Thoughts?
At the invitation of Princeton University Press, I have just read a fascinating forthcoming book, Stranger in the Mirror: The Scientific Search for the Self, by Fresno State psychologist Robert Levine....
View ArticleCan “Brain-Training” Games Sharpen Your Mind?
You’ve likely heard the NPR ads for brain fitness games offered by Lumosity. “70 Million brain trainers in 182 countries challenge their brains with Lumosity,” declares its website. The hoped-for...
View ArticleTeaching News You Can Use
Three items from yesterday’s reading:The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) has just offered a nice video introduction to I/O Psychology (here). At 4-minutes, it’s well-suited...
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Human Nature: What Behavior Genetics has Taught Us
Amid concerns about the replicability of psychological science findings comes “a cause for celebration,” argue behavior geneticist Robert Plomin and colleagues (here). They identify ten “big” take-home...
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Do Narcissists—or “Nice Guys”—Finish Last?
Would you agree or disagree with these statements from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory?1. I know that I am good because everybody keeps telling me so.2. People love me. And you know what,...
View ArticlePsychology’s “Reproducibility Crisis”—or Not?
It was, as our NYC-bred presidential candidates would say, “yuge” news, both in and beyond psychological science: When 270 researchers in an “Open Science Collaboration” network redid 100 recent...
View ArticleThe Social Psychology of Trade Agreements
The Sanders v. Clinton and Trump v. others debates offer, as do others, clashing arguments regarding free trade agreements: Anti-trade agreement argument: “Free trade” agreements, such as NAFTA and the...
View ArticleImplicit Egotism: Liking Things We Associate with Ourselves
Some psychological science findings are just plain fun. Few are more so than the studies of what Brett Pelham and his colleagues call “implicit egotism”—our tendency to like what’s associated with us....
View ArticleThe Internet as a Political Echo Chamber
I cut my eye teeth in social psychology with a dissertation followed by a decade of research exploring group polarization. Our repeated finding: When like minds interact, their views often become more...
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