Category: Psychology

PsyBlog is now on Twitter, right here.

So many people have kindly been sharing articles from PsyBlog with others on Twitter that the tweet count for recent articles is now fairly hefty. Thanks very much to all the Twitterers who’ve been spreading the word!

Continue reading “PsyBlog Now on Twitter”

At school all the cool kids were slouchers. No one wanted to be seen sitting up straight, paying attention or, heaven forbid making an effort to learn. It was only the geeks in the front row, hoovering up all that useless knowledge, who kept their backs straight. The rest were doing their best to reach the horizontal, and sometimes exceeding it.

Continue reading “Sit Up Straight! Be Confident!”

Some of the best writing about psychology from blogs.

Forty of the best psychology blogs, chosen to give you a broad sweep of the most interesting content being produced online right now.

The list is split into three sections: first are more general psychological blogs, followed by those with an academic slant, followed by condition specific and patient perspective blogs.

Other than that the blogs are presented in no particular order.

Update Sept 2021: most of the blogs below are now sadly inactive, except for the blog you are currently reading PsyBlog.

General:

1. PsyBlog: The blog you’re reading right now—you should subscribe to PsyBlog here.
2. MindHacks: links to psychological goodness from all around the web.
3. (Now inactive) Cognitive Daily: in-depth coverage of cognitive psychology research.
4. The Last Psychiatrist: thoughtful, iconoclastic perspective from a practising psychiatrist.
5. Channel N: brain and behaviour videos.
6. BPS Research Digest: accessibly covers new psychological research.
7. (Now inactive) Encephalon: neuroscience/psychology ‘blog carnival’.
8. Neurophilosophy: about molecules, minds and everything inbetween.
9. Neuromarketing: brain science in marketing and sales.
10. PsychCentral Blog: team blog, focusing more on clinical topics: depression, anxiety etc..
11. The Situationist: links to articles on social psychology.
12. We’re Only Human: journalist Wray Herbert writes about the quirks of human nature.
13. Psychology Today Blogs: ‘essential reads’ from Psychology Today’s stable of bloggers.
14. (Now inactive) The Frontal Cortex: by author and journalist Jonah Lehrer.
15. (Now inactive) All In The Mind Blog: companion to good Australian radio show covering mind matters.
16. (Now inactive) Frontier Psychiatrist: anonymous London-based psychiatrist critical of the profession.
17. Neuronarrative: psychology with a public health slant.
18. (Now inactive) Jena Pincott: science of love, sex and attraction.
19. Research Blogging: posts collected from variety of blogs but all peer-reviewed research.
20. In the News: forensic psychologist Karen Franklin on the intersection between psychology and law.
21. The Mouse Trap: musings on cognitive and developmental psychology.
22. (Now inactive) The Trouble with Spikol: mental health policy issues discussed by writer Liz Spikol.
23. Bad Science: Covers more than psychology but Dr Ben Goldacre is such good value we’ll let him off.

More academic:

1. Dr Petra Boynton: sex educator and academic exposes media misrepresentations of science.
2. Babel’s Dawn: exploring the origins of language.
3. The Neurocritic: anonymous, critical, mischievous.
4. Advances in the History of Psychology: it’s all in the title.
5. Deric Bounds’ MindBlog: biological view of the brain from an Emeritus Professor.
6. (Now inactive) Brain Stimulant: neurotechnology methods of brain stimulation.
7. (Now inactive) Social Psychology Eye: written by contributors to the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
8. Child Psychology Research Blog: by clinical child psychologist, an expert on mood disorders.

Condition specific/patient perspective blogs:

1. Panic!: writer who’s been dealing with panic disorder for 20 years.
2. (Now inactive) The Tangled Neuron: layperson reports on memory loss, Alzheimer’s & dementia.
3. Beyond Blue: author provides guidance on how to get through depression.
4. (Now inactive) Walking the Black Dog: one person’s battle with ‘the black dog’.
5. (Now inactive) Postpartum Progress: advocate for women, Katherine Stone, on postpartum mental health problems.
6. The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive: Seaneen is a twenty-three year old Irish girl writing about her life.
7. (Now inactive) Autism Blog: autism research described by Lisa Jo Rudy, who has first-hand experience of the condition.
8. The Reality of Anxiety: Aimee, who suffers from social anxiety, promoting understanding of the condition.

.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.” ~Romeo and Juliet

In these lines from Shakespeare’s famous play, Juliet is trying to persuade Romeo that the bitter feud between their respective families doesn’t matter, that he and his surname are easily divisible, and so they can be together.

Continue reading “Are Your Initials Holding You Back?”

Reading and writing from left to right is a skill so well-practised, so ingrained in language, that it’s easy to ignore. Yet, according to some research, the direction in which language flows could have implications that spread into many other areas of our experience.

Continue reading “Why Left to Right Punches Are More Aggressive, Powerful and Shocking”

· How and why we consume and how our beliefs, ideas and senses influence consumption.

Peter Drucker, the management consultant, famously argued that about 80% of all products and services fail or fall well short of targets within six months of launching. Clearly markets have little understanding of what consumers want — perhaps because people have little clue themselves.

Continue reading “Consumer Psychology”

In 2005 Malcolm Gladwell published a book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It had an extremely seductive message: that complex decisions are often more accurate when made quickly, unconsciously, in the blink of an eye.

Continue reading “Can the Unconscious Outperform the Conscious Mind?”

Memory can be frustrating. No doubt you’ll have experienced the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: when despite knowing a particular word (often a name or place), it just won’t come out of your mouth. But did you know that deaf people using sign language experience this phenomenon, except in their case the word isn’t on the tip-of-the-tongue, but on the tip-of-the-fingers?

Continue reading “Deaf Signers Feel Words On the Tip of their Fingers”

Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, has a new book coming out called Outliers: The Story of Success.

Which means that shortly people will start asking if you’ve read it. So you need to read the following paragraph excerpted from the Observer interview:

Continue reading “Malcolm Gladwell: Success Comes from Social Advantages”