Relationships

A traditional requirement of romantic love is that of exclusiveness. The validity of the exclusiveness requirement, which emphasizes the negative requirement of limiting, can be doubted when compared to that of uniqueness, which emphasize the positive feature of being special.  Read More

Divorce isn't all bad. If nothing else, it makes singles considerably more cautious about getting married; people are waiting longer to tie the knot and, with the exception of the occasional fly-by-night, drunken Las Vegas betrothals, most folks do the best they can to ascertain whether their prospective mate is a good match. After all, compatibility is the name of the game, right? Well, truth be told, not exactly. Read More

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article titled “Poll Shows Racial Division on Obama’s Candidacy.” The story included several examples of divergence between White and Black Americans’ perceptions of the presidential campaign; for example, more than 80% of Black respondents reported a positive impression of Barack Obama, compared to closer to 30% of Whites. Some of the most interesting findings, however, have nothing to do with presidential politics, but rather speak to the persistent divide in how Americans think about race, a divide that too frequently is only discussed by behavioral researchers. Read More

Many of you will have heard of the concepts of: "Chaos Theory" "The Butterfly Effect" or maybe even "Emergence" "Fractals" "Complexity" or "Catastrophe" theories. Each of these is an example of a nonlinear dynamic. My challenge in this blog will be to make nonlinear dynamics understandable and interesting to you. My experience thus far has been that everything in psychology is a part of a nonlinear system. So we will be able to talk about nearly any topic here. That will help to keep things interesting.

Abusive relationships are fairly simple. They are driven by insecurity, fear that feeds that insecurity and an expectation of inconsistency, both real and perceived. Read More

If Anger Helps You Feel in Control, No Wonder You Can't Control Your Anger!

The heading above pithily sums up my own professional experience working with this so problematic emotion. Read More

Japanese game shows have been satirized by a variety of long-running American television shows such as "The Simpsons" and "Saturday Night Live." Americans found these parodies to be amusing despite little knowledge of actual Japanese game shows. Finally, ABC decided to take advantage of this form of popular culture by airing "I Survived a Japanese Game Show." So, what took so long?

The enormous time and energy investment of mothers compared to that of fathers influences the number of children they bear. Here's how and why. Read More