Category: Psychology

The series on weird psychology opens up with a suggestion kindly provided by Dr Vitelli of the first reported case of a man suffering from both Cotard’s syndrome and lycanthropy. The Iranian authors describe a 32-year-old man admitted to a psychiatric hospital with some unusual delusional beliefs (Nejad & Toofani, 2005). First he believed he was dead, yet immortal (Cotard’s syndrome) and second he thought he was a dog (lycanthropy).

Continue reading “I’m a Dead Dog: First Case of Cotard’s and Lycanthropy”

The effects of smell are rarely researched in psychological studies. That’s why it’s great to come across this study by Gueguen and Petr (2006) on the effect of different smells on how much time and money people spend in a restaurant. But not, as you might imagine, the smell of the food, but the smell of lavender.

Continue reading “Diners Spend More In Lavender-Scented Restaurant”

Discover the most accessible and well-written psychology blogs available on the web.

Here are some blogs that look at more specific topics. Some of these blogs are also gateways to further related blogs so explore those blogrolls.

Update: here’s a more recent list of 40 superb psychology blogs.

Continue reading “Guide to Psychology Blogs – Part 3”

Discover the most accessible and well-written psychology blogs available on the web.

More great blogs, stacks of fantastic content, all free. Perhaps there is hope for humanity.

Update: here’s a more recent list of 40 superb psychology blogs.

Continue reading “Guide to Psychology Blogs – Part 2”

Discover the most accessible and well-written psychology blogs available on the web.

It’s a real treat to see the breadth, quality and sometimes sheer quirkiness of the psychology blogging going on out there. To help you navigate all this fabulous information, here’s a list of my favourite accessible psychology blogs

Update: here’s a more recent list of 40 superb psychology blogs.

Continue reading “Guide to Psychology Blogs – Part 1”

When nonverbal behaviour varies across cultures, it’s easy to misunderstand someone from a different culture to your own. Despite this, when learning a foreign language, there’s not much focus on nonverbal behaviour. Perhaps there should be. I came across a nice example of a cross-cultural misunderstanding from Will Baker writing in the EFL Professional’s Written Forum:

Continue reading “Education Reduces Cross-Cultural Misunderstanding of Nonverbal Behaviour”

That’s according to a study which assessed the effects of smileys :) and frownies :( as I’m now calling them. Walther and D’Addario (2001) found that while smileys had no effect on the way a message was interpreted, frowns did reduce the positivity of positive messages. Overall, though, the effect of emoticons was relatively small.

Continue reading “Frown and the Net Frowns With You, But Smile and You Smile Alone”

According to some research it’s Russians! And the least control over facial emotions? Americans. These are just two relatively new findings to emerge from studying cultural differences in nonverbal behaviour. Perhaps the best known findings about differences between cultures relate to interpersonal space. Arab males sit closer than American males. Indonesians interact more closely than Australians. Italians more closely than Americans or Germans, Columbians closer than Puerto Ricans. Despite these differences, there are also surprising commonalities.

Continue reading “Which Culture Most Controls Their Facial Emotions?”

Lies are extremely difficult to detect. Research shows the average person barely does any better than chance. Part of the reason may be there’s so much misinformation about how to detect lies floating around. Years of work in psychology, including research from real police interviews conducted by Aldert Vrij and colleagues, provides guidance on which nonverbal signals do and which don’t signal lying (Vrij, 2006).

Continue reading “Detecting Lies: Top 3 Myths, Top 5 Proven Factors”

Compared with face-to-face communication, nonverbal cues in email are lacking. But humans are fabulous at generating meaning even when cues are sparse. Psychologists have theorised our motivation for generating meaning is reducing levels of uncertainty and helping predict other people’s behaviour. This might explain how, in emails, even two simple things like capitalisation and emoticons can have important effects on reader’s perceptions. People want to predict our behaviour, and we theirs.

Continue reading “How do Emoticons and Capitalisation Affect Perception of Email?”