Affect, Automaticity, and Change

BAM! ANGRY BABY!
There it is.
In case you’re wondering, “it” is the quick “Whoa, angry baby!” reaction you experienced when you saw the picture. First let’s check the speed of the reaction.  Quick cognitive processes carried out by your brain immediately perceived the baby’s facial expression as the primary input. The output, the “whoa” response we [...]

Stand by (and do nothing)

This entry in the psychology series will draw upon current events. You might have seen this horrible story, the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, CA (the picture at right is approximately where the attack took place).  Here are harrowing details from the SF Chronicle about the incident:
“What ensued was 2 1/2 hours [...]

Cognitive Dissonance – Believe, do, then believe otherwise

We’d like to think that our private mental lives and outward behaviors correspond with and inform each other.
We hope that our attitudes predict and guide behavior. Pish, that would be too easy! Psychology, in her relatively short history, has sometimes confirmed our intuitions about human nature. But more often than not, psychological research will upend [...]

Gilbert – I understand ergo I believe

This entry will consider a paper by Daniel Gilbert entitled, “How Mental Systems Believe” (published in 1991 in American Psychologist, full text here).
Before we can really delve into psychological mechanisms and how they influence behavior, which we’ll learn about in later posts,  we first need to know how the mind processes information.
In our human experience, [...]

Psychology series (introduction)

I have determined that the time has come for me to discover (or re-discover) psychology studies and/or articles from the 20th century that have significantly impacted how we think about the mind and human behavior.

My intention with this is manifold: not only to describe and inform, but to challenge, question, and provoke. Psychology is one [...]