Can you count how many times the basketballs are passed in this video? Did you guess right? Did you see the mystery guest? *Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff (Creative Commons)
Tag Archives: psychology
The Mental Illness Taboo
Building on one of the eight modern cultural taboos discussed yesterday, I want to talk about the way our society views and deals with the issue of mental illness. There are two distinct aspects of this: 1) How we as individuals approach mental illness in our own lives. and 2) How we as a group approach mental illness in the lives of those around us. Today, I want to talk about the second. Tragic Misunderstandings To begin, check out this short video from National Geographic: Though I’ve never personally met anyone whose story was quite like Larry’s, I’ve seen many … Read more »
Capgras Syndrome and Emotion
This is a follow-up to today’s post on the story of David Silvera. If you haven’t already, check it out here- A World Of Impostors. Since there wasn’t enough space to get into much detail in the first post, I wanted to explore Capgras Syndrome and the explanation that’s been proposed by V.S. Ramachandran a little more in this follow-up post. For those who are interested, the videos and links below will probably be the most useful. This is mostly just a broad overview. First of all, here are a few quotes from Ramachandran about Capgras Syndrome (also referred to … Read more »
A World Of Impostors
In the field of psychology, scientists begin their search to discover what X does by finding instances where X is either broken or absent, then considering what functions or behaviors are affected as a result. This kind of research is called a case study, which is really just another term for a story. When asking the question, “What is emotion?”, it follows that the best place for us to begin is with a story about a man for whom the emotional inner-workings aren’t functioning as they should be. And that is what leads us to the story of David Silvera. * * * … Read more »
What Makes You Curious?
Today’s post is going to be a compilation of all the various resources, articles, etc. I’ve found while reading about curiosity over the past week. I’m including links to all of the same sources, so feel free to check them out yourself… What Makes You Curious? Perhaps the most interesting site I’ve come across is Curiosity.com, a sister-site of Discovery. Specific to this week and the idea of curiosity, though, is a page where over 100 people (all popular scientists, authors, executives, artists, etc.) were asked the question “What makes you curious?” Here are a few short quotes from several … Read more »
The Psychology of Alien Abductions
It turns out that Christmas came early. I was skimming through the headlines and came across an article in Psychology Today which describes the psychology of alien abductions. If you know me and / or ever read this blog, you can probably imagine my delight. I highly recommend you read the full article, but I’ll cover some of the highlights here… The Psychology Of Alien Abductions The article, originally published in 2003, is essentially a back-and-forth between two sides of the alien abduction debate. Both sides are from the faculty at Harvard. In the “abduction is possibly legitimate” corner is the late psychiatrist and professor John Mack. … Read more »
Heightism: Why Being Short Could Cost You $100K
You’re probably familiar with terms like racism and sexism. But what about heightism? The other day I stumbled across some interesting (and a few shocking) statistics demonstrating a correlation between height and career success. In 2004, Timothy A. Judge and Daniel M. Cable conducted an analysis of four larger studies on height and career success. After compiling the data and accounting for other factors (gender, weight, and age), their analysis suggested the following correlations between height and salary: 1 inch of height = $789 / year in salary A 6′ 0″ person will make $5,525 more per year (on average) than a 5′ 5″ person. “If you take this … Read more »