Jeremy Dean over at PsyBlog1 and Chris Berdik at The Boston Globe2 discuss an interesting study about stress by Alia Crum3. Crum wanted to see if how we consider stress changes how we experience it. So one group of people were shown a video explaining the downsides of stress. The other group was shown a… Continue reading Stress and Belief About Stress
Author: Dan Pouliot
A New Hampshire native, Dan received his BFA in Oil Painting from UNH; his digital works are in multiple permanent collections. Dan’s been a positive psychology student/practitioner, a blogger, an amateur Remote Viewer, and now a novelist. His dual passions for anomalous cognition and positive thinking set the stage for his debut young adult novel, Super Human, published by PortalStar Publishing. Dan describes Super Human as The Karate Kid meets Escape to Witch Mountain.
When Praising Children Backfires
Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman, in their book NurtureShock, note that new studies indicate that certain kinds of praise of children can have an unintended consequence of making children risk averse1. When a child is praised for their intelligence, there is a tendency for that child to steer away from difficult challenges. The avoidance suggests… Continue reading When Praising Children Backfires
Suppressing Immune Systems With Sweets
This is not a story about the evils of sweets— in this story sweets is an innocent pawn… Robert Ader is a psychologist who stumbled upon an amazing discovery in the 1970s while studying taste aversion along with Nicholas Cohen. They wanted to see if by making rats nauseous every time they were fed something… Continue reading Suppressing Immune Systems With Sweets
The Job of Clever People
“The job of clever people is to ask difficult questions. The job of very clever people is to ask deceptively simple ones.” —The Economist1 The Economist, September 7, 2013, The man who showed why firms exist [↩]
Pseudoscience, Pseudoskepticism and Rejection Bias
Everyone has heard of pseudoscience— unscientific ideas masquerading in the guise of science. But its corollary is less well known. Pseudoskepticism is also unscientific ideas masquerading in the guise of science. Pseudo-skeptics are also known as debunkers but I prefer the former term as it rightly notes that pseudoscience and pseudoskepticism are two sides of… Continue reading Pseudoscience, Pseudoskepticism and Rejection Bias
Are You Motivated More by Love, Fear, or Hatred?
I ran into a loose shower knob recently, and I see how it is like me. Properly functioning shower knobs are easily turned off… just keep turning until it stops. This loose knob did not work that way; I could easily turn it past the off position and it would drip. In order to turn… Continue reading Are You Motivated More by Love, Fear, or Hatred?