The human mind is weird. I think we’ve already established that, but I wanted to make mention of it, again. Go grab a pencil and hold it between your teeth, long ways. Or use a finger. If you do this for long enough, you might notice a rise in your mood. The idea behind this […]
There’s this idea floating around that only people with serious mental disorders go for therapy. I’m not entirely sure where this notion comes from – I would theorize it comes from historical events, where the most salient examples of mental health care are linked to cruel and abusive asylums for individuals with severe pathologies, but that […]
That’s a good question. Most of us go to the doctor or the dentist starting from a very young age, so we grow up with something in mind about what a visit to the doctor is like. However, psychological services remain something of a mystery until an individual seeks them out on their own – […]
It’s a mantra in grad-school that one’s theoretical orientation and the services they provide in their therapies should center on “evidence-based practices.” With the demand for mental health care treatment on the rise, a hot topic in recent years has been the efficacy of psychological versus pharmacological treatments. Psychological interventions are costly for health insurance […]
So, all psychologists have their “thing,” an area or a particular topic in the field that they find really, really fascinating. Gender is my “thing.” Sex and gender are popular topics among laypersons and scientists alike. People and the media often talk about women and men as polar opposites in a never-ending “battle of the […]
The other day, I heard a story about someone who absolutely loves hot sauce – she can basically chug it. Apparently, she’s been a hot sauce aficionado since she was a baby. It’s unusual to hear about a baby tolerating such bitter substances because infants typically react adversely to bitterness (Boyd and Bee, 2010; some […]
When we talk about human nature, we often say that we’re “hardwired” to be a certain way, that we’re “programmed” to behave in a particular manner. With the way that people so often speak about human psychology, one starts to conceptualize of the brain as a rigid structure laid out from birth, something unmalleable that […]
In the United States, the average commute to work is about 25 minutes. About 8% of the population has a commute 60 minutes or longer, and 61% of people in that group get to work by driving alone (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). I am one of those people. And all that time (all. that. time.) […]
At some point in your life, perhaps at the eye doctor or during a check-up by the school nurse, you have probably been asked to look at Ishihara plates, images comprised of colored dots forming numbers against a dotted background. The Ishihara Color Test, named for its creator, is used to test for red-green color […]
Something to crow about Aesop’s Fable, “The Crow and the Pitcher,” tells the story of a thirsty crow that comes across a pitcher of water. There is a problem, though: The mouth of the pitcher can fit the crow’s beak, but not its head, and the pitcher is only half full. The crow thinks for […]