Psychology Today

People love simple stories about human psychology. They get touted in the news all the time. Play brain games and get smarter. Meditate and watch your stress melt away.

Lying is a pretty sophisticated behavior. When you lie to someone else, you need to understand that when you tell them something that you know is not true, that they come to believe the false information. That means that you need to understand that their belief and your belief will differ.

The United States seems to exist in a state of perpetual political campaign these days. Politicians play on people’s dissatisfaction and unhappiness as they talk about why they will be able to make things better. The hidden assumption of this work is that if the economy improves, people will be happier.

An ancient proverb says, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This proverb suggests that I may choose to cooperate with one of my rivals when I know that this cooperation will allow us to defeat a common enemy.

As a college student, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my work life would be like. I watched the adults in my life and saw that not everyone loved the work they did. Many of them were glad that they could provide for their families, but did not head to work in the morning excited to do their jobs.

Vaccination for childhood diseases like Measles and Whooping Cough was one of the most significant public health victories of the second half of the 20th century. When I was in elementary school in the 1970s, these diseases had been relegated to the past.

Going back to the 1950s, social and cognitive psychologists noticed that people’s beliefs tend to become more coherent over time. For example, a couple buying a house might initially notice both the positive and negative elements of that house. If they decide they are not going to buy that house, they may start to focus on the negatives rather than the positives.

At any given moment in your life, you have a set of values that guide your actions at an abstract level. As an academic psychologist, for example, I value knowledge, and spend a lot of time pursuing it. Success has also been a value for me, and so I have devoted time to my career. My values are not shared by everyone.

We want people to take the stairs rather than the elevator, to eat fruits and vegetables rather than candy bars, and to help others rather than thinking only about themselves.

Standing in line at any coffee shop gives you a chance to observe lots of smart phone behavior. Almost everyone in the line is staring at a small screen. Many of them are busily swiping at the screen, presumably moving the icons on the screen from page to page?

I have the opportunity to work with groups who are trying to develop creative solutions to problems. One thing I have noticed is that groups often try to end the task of generating new potential solutions fairly quickly. After they have generated a couple of good ideas, they want to move on to evaluating those ideas and planning a way to execute those ideas.

There are many rewards for doing research in psychology. For one, it is just plain fun. There is something powerful about making progress on one of the world’s great scientific mysteries. For another, the things we learn about psychology have the potential to make people’s lives better.

Modern slot machines are fascinating devices. Most of them are not mechanical, they are electronic. That means that you pull the lever (or press a button) and the machine draws a random number that determines whether you have won. After that, the machine displays a show on the screen that ultimately lets you see whether you won.

I remember as a kid that my parents shared vivid memories of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. They could tell me where they were and who they were with when they found out the president had been shot. In 1977, Roger Brown and James Kulik called memories like this flashbulb memories.