Psychology

The American religious experience is changing. The mystical experience has long been a part of the human religious experience. It is in fact believe to be the original documented form of the human religious experience. The 16,000 years old cave painting of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain, are now understood to be part of a mystical initiation ceremony. It is believed that young initiates from ancient hunting bands had to crawl though the dark narrow passages and enter the large cave halls painted with images of majestic animals, where they were guided through a consciousness…

Many studies have shown, and common sense dictates, that good looks greatly benefit those who have them. Prettier people tend to have more social relationships, and reap the psychological benefits as a result. What may not be so widely known, however, is that the relevance of physical appearance varies based on geography. According to a study published in Personal Relationships, The importance of attractiveness depends on the social environment where we live. Attractiveness does matter in more socially mobile, urban areas (and from a woman's point of view actually indicates psychological…

Your ability to resist that tempting cookie depends on how a big a threat you perceive it to be, according to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research. University of Texas researchers studied techniques that enable us to resist food and other temptations. "Four experiments show that when consumers encounter temptations that conflict with their long-term goals, one self-control mechanism is to exaggerate the negativity of the temptation as a way to resist, a process we call counteractive construal," the researchers write. For example, in one study, female participants were asked to…

The question on everyone’s lips is “Why?” Why did someone like Tiger Woods, who had so much to lose, do what he did? Because he could? Because he didn’t care?We’ll never really know until the Oprah interview. (You know it’s coming.) In the meantime, here is an observation about the whole debacle. Tiger Woods did not just have a series of one-night-stands with these women. He had extended “relationships” with several of them. What is really interesting from an evolutionary point of view is the actual length of these affairs. Most of them lasted 2 to 3 years. This roughly corresponds to the…

The question on everyone’s lips is “Why?” Why did someonelike Tiger Woods, who had so much to lose, do what he did? Because he could? Because he didn’t care? We’ll never really know until the Oprah interview. (You knowit’s coming.)   In the meantime, here is an observation about the wholedebacle. Tiger Woods did not just have a series of one-night-standswith these women. He had extended “relationships” with several of them. What is really interesting from an evolutionary point ofview is the actual length of these affairs. Most of them lasted 2 to 3 years. This roughly corresponds…

Creativity seems to be the "buzz word" of the 2000s. Society values it, companies need it, and employers want it. Or do they? What society claims to want and what is actually rewarded in practice are two different things. We claim to want innovation, but are innovation and creativity actually encouraged, or even allowed in most environments? What types of creative behaviors are rewarded by society, and what types are punished? I wrote an article several months back titled, "We perform best when no one tells us what to do", in which I discussed a TED talk given by Dan Pink, on the Economics of…

Hint- It's not the obvious one. Here is the question:What is the number one reason men give for cheating on their partner? a) Primarily sexual dissatisfactionb) Other/ no dissatisfactionc) Equal emotional and sexual dissatisfactiond) Primarily emotional dissatisfaction The answers a) Primarily sexual dissatisfaction - 8%b) Other/ no dissatisfaction - 12%c) Equal emotional and sexual dissatisfaction - 32%d) Primarily emotional dissatisfaction - 48% This statistic comes from M. Gary Neuman's book "The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What you can do About it." According to Neuman, when…

With the fall semester coming to a close, a Purdue University psychologist has some advice for all those college students who are poring over their notes in preparation for finals. Don't. In a paper recently featured in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, psychologist Jeffrey D. Karpicke suggests that students spend their study sessions testing themselves repeatedly, improving their memory retrieval skills, as opposed to cramming for tests using written notes. He says this strategy will make recalling the information much easier when the pressure is on. Karpicke found in his…

Contrary to the widely held assumption that people use facebook and other social networking sites to make idealized impressions of themselves, a new psychology study suggests that facebook and myspace profiles are actually utilized for genuine social interaction and portray accurate personality images as a result. To conduct the study, the researchers collected 236 profiles of college-aged people from the United States (facebook) and Germany (StudiVZ, SchuelerVZ). The researchers used questionnaires to assess the profile owners' actual personality characteristics as well as theirideal-…

Religious people say their belief in a personal god functions as a moral compass, helping them form opinions about controversial issues and distinguish right from wrong. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, suggests that it's just the opposite; people attribute whatever they happen to believe to god. The paper reports the results of seven separate studies. The first four include surveys of Boston rail commuters, UChicago undergraduate students and a nationally representative database of online respondents in the United States. In these…