Beginning early in development, children learn from watching others and through social interaction. Do children learn about the social world when they watch screens, and can that compare with real life? Social interaction is an important pathway …
Have you ever seen a movie which has a great musical score? Wondered how film composers and music directors write and choose music to enhance the images and make the whole experience more powerful? Dr. Roger Kendall, a UCLA Ethnomusicology professor wi …
An article was published today in the Huffington Post, titled “Romney: ‘Some Gays Are Actually Having Children. It’s Not Right on Paper. It’s Not Right in Fact.’”The article reviews a Boston Globe piece from yesterday in which some of Romney’s actions …
Earlier today, I read an article published on Washington’s Blog titled “Fear of Terror Makes People Stupid.” The central claim of the post was that the government purposefully induces fear of a terrorist attack in order to get Americans to relinq …
There is a long history and a strong literature linking psychological aspects of peoples’ lives and coronary heart disease. Early research found a connection between coronary heart disease and a personality characteristic called Type A. Type A per …
Imagining the stereotypical executive doesn’t exactly conjure up the image of a zen-like state. Instead, we tend to associate leadership roles with too many demands and not enough time to meet them—in essence, a pretty stressful lifestyle. After all, m …
No matter how compelling their arguments are, attempts to legitimize “sex addiction” as bona fide psychopathology are most often met with dismissive eye rolls at best and sheer outrage at worst.
This post is the first of three on the Wason selection task (Part II), and part of our ongoing series exploring classic experiments and theories in the history of psychological research.
With election season coming up, the presidential candidates have invested heavily—recruiting top ad executives, media researchers, producers, etc.—in creating the perfect ads to highlight their own strengths and their opponents’ shortcomings. But how m …
Stereotype threat is the experience of anxiety or concern when someone believes they are in a position to confirm a stereotype about their social group. For example, girls who are primed with information that women tend to do worse on math tests right …
Based on the 1993 nonfiction book by John Kerr entitled A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabrina Spielrein, the film chronicles the early days of psychoanalysis.
Most people have heard terms like depression, anxiety, even schizophrenia; diagnoses that seem to receive a lot of attention in the general public. But little public awareness seems to exist about one of the most lethal forms of child abuse, known as F …
Most people think of the word engagement and automatically start imagining a tiny box, a diamond ring, and someone down on one knee. I think of engagement and start thinking about therapy. Strange, huh? Well, if you think of what the word actually mean …
Psychology in Action is proud to announce a panel discussion in collaboration with the UCLA Theater, Film, and Television Department to take place on Friday, May 25th, 2012, from 4 to 6pm in UCLA’s Bridges Theater (Melnitz 1409). The discussion will f …
The pressure to publish positive findings (instead of null results) is present across scientific discipline, but several researchers have argued that the field of Psychology is the most biased offender. An article posted last week in Nature.com discus …
By: Diana Elihu http://www.streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/adderall-doesnt-work/ At universities across America, students are becoming increasingly addicted to a popular prescription drugs, not because they’re trying to get high, but because t …
“Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” Most people easily pick up on the importance of television programming like Sesame Street and other educational shows for young children. Shows like these embed lessons about letters, manners, multiculturalism …
Dr. Matt Lieberman and former Psych in Action blogger Dr. Emily Falk are getting a lot of attention for their paper in Psychological Science that found that the specific brain regions that were activated while viewing health related advertisements pred …
Many dating sites advertise that they will match you with a partner who is highly compatible. Those signing up for Chemistry.com, eHarmony, or similar other websites, are asked to complete prescreening information about their background and personality …
I wrote a post a few months ago about some common misconceptions about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and one of my main points was that the term ‘lights up”, which is often used when describing the areas of the brain that respond to a …
Most of us have gotten loyalty cards at one point or another that treated us to a free item after a certain amount of purchases at that particular establishment. Most of us have also tossed more than one of those cards after realizing they weren’t wort …