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Does Pornography “Mess with Your Manhood”?
The April 11, 2016 TIME cover story on “Porn and the Threat to Virility” was replete with anecdotes of young men’s real-life sexual responsiveness being depleted by excessive pornography...
View ArticleTalent + Grit + Luck = Success
“Self-made” people underestimate their fortunate circumstances and their plain good luck. That’s the argument, in the May Atlantic, of Robert Frank, a Cornell economist whose writings I have...
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An Interactive Atlas of Emotions
With support from the Dalai Lama, the famed emotion researcher, Paul Ekman, has created an interactive Atlas of Emotions. Ekman’s survey of 248 emotion researchers identified five basic emotions that...
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The Net Effect
In an 80-minute class for which I recently guest-lectured, the instructor (a master teacher) gave students a mid-class break to enable them to stretch and talk to classmates. What a great way to build...
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Social Psychology’s Practical Wisdom
In 1964, I arrived in Iowa City and anxiously walked into the University of Iowa’s psychology department to meet my graduate school advisor. Among his first words: “I know, Dave, that you indicated...
View ArticleNature, Nurture, and Sexual Orientation
Our personal assumptions matter, often by influencing our attitudes and public policies. Here’s an example:If you see same-sex attraction as a lifestyle choice, as swayed by social influence, or as...
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Top-Down Hearing
As every psychology student knows well, human perception is both a “bottom-up” and “top-down” process. Our perceptions are formed, bottom-up (from sensory input) . . . but also top-down (constructed by...
View ArticlePsychologists on the Donald Trump Phenomenon
In authoring textbooks (and this blog) I seek to steer clear of overtly partisan politics. That’s out of respect for my readers’ diverse views, and also because my calling is to report on psychological...
View ArticleThree Guys with Guns
“America is not as divided as some have suggested,” observed President Obama in the aftermath of recent shootings by and of police officers. The President, who has previously displayed a deft...
View ArticleThe Scary Power of Mere Repetition
We’ve heard the name-calling over and again: “Low energy Jeb.” “Lyin’ Ted.” “Crooked Hillary.” If repeated often enough, do such smears, independent of facts, shape public opinion?In his 60 Minutes...
View ArticleCan “Brain Training” Protect us from Mental Decline and Dementia?
News flash . . . from the current New Yorker (July 24, 2016), Wall Street Journal (July 25, 2016), and Time (August 8, 2016) . . . “In the most rigorous study to date, researchers pitted different...
View ArticleThe Brain’s Amazing Plasticity
In Psychology, 11th Edition, Nathan DeWall and I illustrate brain plasticity with a 6-year-old girl who had most of her right hemisphere removed to end life-threatening seizures. In one of the most...
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Further thoughts on “Do Narcissists—or ‘Nice Guys’—Finish Last?”
In an earlier post, I mentioned a report that says “that narcissists make good first impressions, but over time, their arrogance, bragging, and aggressiveness gets old.” This finding replicated an...
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Could Mass Killings Be Contagious?
San Bernadino. Paris. Nice. Orlando. Munich. Dallas. The recent cluster of horrific events make us wonder: Is such violence socially contagious?Or do killings come in clusters merely for the reason...
View ArticleSpeedy Vestibular Sense: Try This!
With thanks to Christopher Platt (NIDCD Director of Hearing and Balance programs), here’s a simple demonstration of our super-speedy vestibular system. As you have surely noticed, if you slip, your...
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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...
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