Category: Psychology

This week PsyBlog is dedicated to the psychology of money.

Over the next week or so I hope you’ll join me on a journey into the psychology of money. Send me your questions as we explore our sometimes strange, sometimes passionate, always complex relationship with filthy lucre:

• Why some people are so obsessed with it, why others don’t care.
• How we decide what to spend it on.
• Why things cost the amount they do.

And many more questions I haven’t thought of yet! I’ll be looking at psychological studies, theories about money and running some polls to reveal our attitudes.

Continue reading “Psychology of Money: What Do We Want To Know?”

Mind-myth 9: Two widely publicised studies have contributed to the myth that the biological progress of cancer can be effectively battled with the power of the mind. Unfortunately these studies – one at Stanford and one at UCLA – have been heavily criticised and subsequent research has failed to back them up.

Continue reading “The Mind Cannot Beat Cancer”

Mind-myth 6: Here’s a quick question for you about human vision. Compare these four very short descriptions of how we see, and decide which you think is true:

1. Rays of energy coming into our eyes allow us to see.
2. Rays first coming into the eyes then going back out again allow us to see.
3. Rays first going out of the eyes then coming back in allow us to see.
4. Rays simultaneously going out and coming back into the eyes allow us to see.

Continue reading “50% of College Students Think We See Like Superman, Despite Perception Course”

Mind-myth 2: studies show that the blind’s other senses are not more acute, but they can learn some amazing skills to compensate, like echolocation.

It’s an oft-repeated idea that blind people’s other senses compensate for their lack of sight. Like the idea that we only use 10% of our brains, it is probably repeated because its rosy optimism seems harmless. In fact it’s a myth with a kernel of truth.

Continue reading “Blind People’s Other Senses Not More Acute”

Thanks to everyone who voted and left comments on the poll I put up last week asking about the accessibility of PsyBlog. I asked whether you find that PsyBlog is pitched at the right level of complexity for you.

Continue reading “Reader Poll: Accessibility Results”

Although cognitive dissonance is a powerful, well-known predictor of human thought and behaviour, its limits are less well understood.

People often display a striking ability to change both their behaviour and their view of the world to try and make it self-consistent. For example, people will interpret seemingly inconsistent information to support their own view of the world and they will adjust their attitudes to make it consistent with their behaviour. One example is that people often value a club or society more if it is harder to get into, even if it turns out to be rubbish.

Continue reading “When Cognitive Dissonance Doesn’t Matter”

Classic psychology studies show just how little access we have to the workings of our own minds.

Ever wondered where your opinions come from, how you manage to be creative, or how you solve problems? Well, don’t bother. Psychology studies examining these areas and more have found that while we’re good at inventing plausible explanations, these explanations are frequently completely made-up.

In this series of posts, I examine some of the classic findings in psychology that show we have precious little insight into our own thought processes.

Continue reading “What Everyone Should Know About Their Own Minds”

From humble beginnings, self-help books have now colonised huge and ever-growing areas of bookshops. Best-selling titles like ‘Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus‘, or ‘Don’t Worry, Make Money‘ promise to teach us how to fix our relationships and live ‘more fully’. But are these, and other come-ons, just empty assurances designed to sell a product?

Continue reading “Is Modern Self-Help Just a Massive Money-Making Scam?”

Accessing our own higher mental processes is often difficult. Psychologists have found it easy to manipulate the reasons we give for decisions, judgements or actions. Worse than this, even when we’re not actively being manipulated, we regularly fool ourselves without the need of any encouragement.

But are these mistakes systematic in any way? Nisbett and Wilson (1977) provide five factors likely to have a huge effect on how accurately we report our own higher mental processes. These give us useful clues about when we’re most likely to be fooling ourselves.

Continue reading “When We Are Fools to Ourselves”

Who do you turn to for a helping hand?

For some common mental health problems people are good at helping each other without the need for professionals. Research has shown face-to-face support groups can be effective for people with depression, chronic mental illness and bereavement. But for those who can’t get to a face-to-face support group, or don’t want to, there’s another rapidly growing option: online support groups.

Continue reading “Can You Recommend an Online Support Group?”