Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized. — Benjamin Haydon As an astute reader, you may have noticed I missed a post last week. And although I pride myself on my consistency of sharing psychophilosophical knowledge, I also pride myself on enjoying a good vacation. Or excuse me: a “psychology conference.”…
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. — E.B. White Last week, we described the introduction of recreationally using marijuana in the United States, through the surge in Mexican immigration in 1910. Already, these immigrants were an outside group (an “outgroup”) to the U.S., and so…
Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error. — Benjamin Rush As someone who explicitly researches the psychology behind advocacy, I can confirm: widespread social change is hard to initiate. People become very comfortable with the status quo and how things are, the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” one of…
Where there is no imagination, there is no horror. – Arthur Conan Doyle Halloween just may be my favorite holiday of the year. Well, after Christmas. And Thanksgiving. And the two weeks leading up to my birthday. And all holidays that cancel school. But still: Halloween is awesome. I mean, how often does society allow…
The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know. – Gaston Bachelard If you’ve seen any news headlines about science lately, you’ve probably read something like: “Out of 100 psychological studies, over 70% failed to replicate!” (sometimes, they even use two exclamation points) Recently, there was an international collaboration by psychologists…
Those who command themselves, command others. — William Hazlitt It’s not easy having a brother in the Naval Academy. It’s even less easy when that brother is graduating this Saturday, your parents are falling all over him (even though you just got your master’s degree), and he’s twice the muscle size as you as your…