About PsyBlog & Jeremy Dean
This website is all about you and me. It's about understanding how our minds work and why we think and act the way we do. Of course bookshop shelves groan with this sort of material in the self-help section, but this site has one crucial difference with much of that material: PsyBlog focuses on scientific psychology.
Research covered here has been published in reputable academic journals in many different areas of psychology. To give you a flavour there is a series on the top 10 social psychology studies, the 7 sins of memory and the psychology of money. You can find more links to articles arranged by theme on the left-hand side of the page under 'Explore...'. Individual popular articles are on the right-hand side.
My name is Jeremy Dean and I am a freelance writer specialising in psychology. I am also currently a PhD candidate at University College London, having previously completed an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology at the same institution. Before that I obtained a Graduate Diploma in Psychology. My first degree was in Law and before studying psychology I had a career in the internet industry.
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Research covered here has been published in reputable academic journals in many different areas of psychology. To give you a flavour there is a series on the top 10 social psychology studies, the 7 sins of memory and the psychology of money. You can find more links to articles arranged by theme on the left-hand side of the page under 'Explore...'. Individual popular articles are on the right-hand side.
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68 comments
I'm a high school teacher who has taught a very introductory Psych/Soc course and I am this semester teaching Advanced Placement Psychology. I was checking out your blog for additional sources and research; I'm certain I will become a regular visitor.
Great, thanks for your comment Leah.
I have a BSc in Psychology, and I work for MindFields College, which delivers psychotherapy training around the UK to 'mental health professionals' and lots of other people :)
Thanks Eleanor, perhaps 'professions allied to psychology' would be a general enough category?
Registered nurse, in a masters program in nursing. Also, MFA in Creative Writing. Reading your career planning posts. Very interesting!
I have a BA in Psychology from Bowling Green State University, I work with children and adolescents with autism. I was checking the blog out for information that was of personal interest and potential autism research info.
Hi Heather and Inspired, welcome to PsyBlog. Thanks for leaving a comment. It really helps me to get an idea who is reading. I hope you'll stick around...
Hi Jeremy, I'm just coming to the end of an undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge, after which I hope to start a PhD (something to do with computational models of development, I'll let you know in a month or so!). Can't tell you how refreshing it is to find a blog like this; looking forward to some thought provoking discussion! Really appreciate the energy that you obviously put it.
Good luck with the PhD Jonathan, I'm very happy you like the blog. Please do comment away, it's great to see.
Very interesting blog, Jeremy. An Internet publisher with a keen interest in health, I'm currently preparing a site that covers health issues of baby boomers. Your blog contains some wonderfully useful, thoughful information, and it helps spark topic ideas. Good luck with your MSc and PhD!
great blog , jeremy.
great writing , and lovely vivid photos.
Welcome to PsyBlog Kbbme and Dino and thanks for your kind words.
Hi Jeremy,
Came across your blog, and Im actually a brit living in ottawa, canada...and i work for a company called s4potential...take a look
www.s4potential.com and we quite recently started blogging...so im looking around for tips and such..
talk to you soon
ciao
Hi anonymous and welcome, I hope the blog is useful for you.
Dear Jeremy
Help. I've become a psyblog addict. I read at work when I need a break and at home before I go to sleep. I even tell all my friends/co-workers (yup they've been receiving daily IM links whether they like it or not). Lately I've noticed words like pareidolia or emotional dissonance creeping into my conversation. Might sound odd from the mouth of a 28 year old designer but it helps break up the predictable office convo. and in my eyes I've always thought design and psychology going hand and hand. Don't know what I'll do the day I finish all the archives....anxiously wait in front of my computer for a new post?
Anyway-Thanks. Great content. Great outlet. Great blog.
Hilary, thank you, that's very nice of you. I better get cracking on some new content...!
I am a student majored in psychology from China. Your Psyblog is so well.
Thank you and welcome to PsyBlog.
Great Blog - I'm so enjoying it and fantastic resources as well. I'm an organisational consultant and psychotherapist blogging from Ireland (and a regular reader!)
Thank you Annette - I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Hi there Jeremy,
Came across your blog when I was doing some neuromarketing research on the web. I'm a psychology major at the University of Waterloo by the way. Keep up the good work on the blog, makes for some interesting read and it certainly beats the research papers I have to read for school any day!
Hi Seto, welcome to PsyBlog - glad you're enjoying it!
Hi Jeremy,
I'm a lawyer from India and was generally looking for something on "guilt" when I chanced upon your blog. It seems very interesting and informative and I'm sure I'll be a regular from now on.
Hi Cherry - good to have you.
Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for the interesting blog. I am working in organizational development and do my own research on Social psychology and Brain sciences as a hobby. Keep moving!
Welcome Tien, I certainly will keep moving, just try and stop me!
I'm a mental health therapist and avid fan of anything to do with the sciences of brain and behavior. Very nice blog. I'll be checking back for sure.
Regarding the alternative to marriage counseling site in your Featured Sites section, are you familiar with evidence that would support her claim that her programs are more effective than marriage counseling?
I woudn't be completely shocked to hear that it could be the case 1) even though counseling beats no treatment and helps most people, it isn't as helpful as we might hope; and 2) clients regularly report less satisfaction with couples counseling than with individual counseling. I think there is a lot of inept couples counseling out there. It is harder to do well than individual therapy.
Anyhow I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. Even if she does have stats to back her up, I recommend she works on her color scheme, egads. Again, nicely done on the blog.
Michaelg, thanks for your comment and welcome to PsyBlog.
BTW, the 'featured sites' section contains my sponsors...
Hi, just wanted to say that I like the work you are putting into this blog. Of profession I am mostly involved with my math studies or technical things, but I'd be lying if I said psychology weren't one of my interests as well. That you are including references is also really helpful since I am not up to date with the journals in that field.
So keep up the good work, and if you should need any extra photos you are welcome to have a look at mine
if i were to learn about psychology or social psychology where should i begin or would you be able to recommend any distance learning course?
Thanks Paul.
Chian, very difficult to recommend anything without knowing more - I'd suggest you do some intensive research.
I'm days away from starting a six year sojourn in clinical psychology grad school in Vancouver, BC. It's so nice to see a blog with APA references tacked neatly on the end of all your entries. This is a great resource for students looking to expand the scope of their studies and expose themselves to research they would otherwise never hear about.
Eventually, a link will go on the psychology resources website I have planned (and procrastinated on).
PS If you'd ever like to do an article on the dangers of perfectionism, my soon-to-be focus, let me know. In the meantime, keep up the good work! :)
Jonathan, thank you and good luck with the course!
great site! :)
Thanks sunchaser!
Great site.
I am a current llm student in UCL. It is the 2nd site I googled out from the search word "objectophilia". You are doing a great job here. Good luck to you.
Thanks both Anons. Good luck with the course at UCL!
A nouveau pomme and delighted to have found your site.
What are you working on for you PhD?
Jo
Hello Jo, glad you like it. I'm working in the area of social health psychology.
I just came across your blog via Health-Psych.blogspot.com - thanks for all the work you put into this!
I've completed MSc in Psych, now venturing forth into the PhD territory myself... I'm looking at resilience and positive coping in people with chronic pain who are living well in the community. This is in stark contrast to the people we usually see in clinic, who are people who are struggling at the time. I look forward to keeping in touch!
I'm an italian student, I'm graduated in experimental psychology. I read all your comments.
But there is an experimental technique, TMS (i.e. transcranial magnetic stimulation) that allows to understand both the brain and the mind. It isn't a brian imaging technique but It can "read" the brian functions. The TMS create a magnetic field that modifies the electric field of brian iterferring with the brian activity. If we stimulate a particular area involving in a particular task we observe an interference in that task. So we can acquire information about localization of cognitive functions. But also...
we can analyze the chronometry of mind. With a single-pulse TMS, we can give a single stimulation in a fixed temporal window. If the process occurs in that time it would be modified, if it occurs before or after the stimulation, it would be unmodified. So we can know when a cognitive process is involved.
If you are interest, I suggest a paper: "Studies in cognition: the problem solved and created by transcranial magnetic stimulation" by E.M. Robertson et al.
P.S. I'm sorry for my bad english
Oh, I make a mistake, I wanted to post my comment in response of the question: "Can Cognitive Neuroscience Tell Us Anything About the Mind?".
Anyway, I think this blog is very interesting... I'll visit it many times...
Hi, just came across this website via Google. I am 18 years old and in September 08 I hope to join College to start studying Psychology, I think deep down it is something I will be good at, I find it very interesting.
I bookmarked this website, and it is 4:11am now but later I will start reading through and learning all there is to learn about Psych.
Hi Adiemus, Cristina & Takuu, welcome to PsyBlog and thanks for commenting.
Hi! I'm a student from malaysia and i stumbled upon your blog by accident. however, i am pleasantly surprised to find a very informative and entertaining blog.. great job, and keep it up!:)
Very glad to have you Nurul - thanks!
Hi Jeremy,
I'm a graduate student in Neuroscience at Iowa looking at motivation and emotion in depression. Very interesting blog.. I stumbled across you (very) late last night. I look forward to talking about emotion /psychology/just cool mind-brain stuff when I've woken up a bit!
Hi, I must say this is a terrific site. I will sure come back for more.
I'm a Psych prof and am pleased to see someone out there trying to tell the world about the scientific side of psychology. There is too little appreciation for experimentation and too much reliance on correlations.
I present Nisbett & Wilson every year, but your article gave me pause - has anyone tried to replicate this work? Why are we still so heavily focused on a 1977 article? This prompted a search and I uncovered the work of Petter Johansson (see his 2005 article in Science and his 2006 article in Consciousness and Cognition). You may wish to give it a look - I've only scanned it but it looks like a nice update on N&W.
Cheers, Mike
Hi Mike, I was thinking exactly the same as I was writing up these studies. Thanks for tracking down this article - I've glanced at it and it looks to be worth writing up.
Thanks again!
Also hello to scaramouche and peace - welcome to PsyBlog!
I came across with your blog and is a very interesting blog. I'm a waitress and I work for a DRAMA Queen restaurant and your blog have help me for personal interest. Great content and Good job! am enjoying it very much! Thank you.
Rosa, thank you, glad you're enjoying it.
Hellow. I am a Psychology major and planning towards graduate school in a year or so. Stumbled your blog. Very informative and interesting. Thanks
Hi, I am the manager of a legal team in a multinational. I am also the father of an autistic boy. I have been interested in psychology for both reasons. I noticed your poll and responded but wanted to comment that I find your blogs informative and interesting - quite a feat!
I'm an engineering undergraduate in my fourth year, and I'm interested to know if the field of psychology has found a way to strengthen or sharpen one's ability to think mathematically or scientifically (besides say, flash cards with addition problems). Certain pathways of thought are very simple for me, like verbal learning, but mathematics take more time for me to process. Obviously as an engineer I'd like this not to be the case...
Hi Ashna, Mun and Dan - welcome! Dan, the only technique I know is to find a good teacher!
I have really enjoyed your blog since discovering it a couple of months ago. Your posts are always interesting, and I find myself following your links for more and back-linking my mini-blog with increasing frequency. Thanks for tickling the little grey cells.
Lorre, glad you like it - and thanks for commenting.
i discovered "Predictably Irrational" through your blog, read it and enjoyed it a lot. Also, your other posts are interesting and well written. Congratulations on this great blog!
Hi Facevampire, glad you like it, thanks!
I am a master student of Psychology in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I really like your blog, it actually made me start my own :)) And I just did!
Good luck and I am looking forward to reading your posts!
Hi there, I found your blog when I googled "taste music personality". I came to think about it once again while listening to Dimmu Borgir. I am always trying to understand myself, so that's how I found your blog. It seems good, thanks !
I am a software engineer and a martial artist who is wondering what next step to take - stay in SW, go for management or go back to school to study philosophy, psychology or anything new, really. I find that I enjoy life when I'm learning new things, and I'm questioning whether I'm really learning in what I've been doing for a decade.
hi Jeremy, your site has been invaluable to me and i wish i'd stumbled on it months ago. I'm writing a dissertation on emotional literacy being implemented in UK primary schools.My primary research has indicated an alarming diversity in teachers attitudes/methods with over 90% receiving minimal or no specific training.I would appreciate your views on this as i can't seem conclude whether this is a positive addition to the curriculum or a possible long term disaster.As there appear to be no comparable studies for an initiative operated on this scale,containing all the components and being sustained throughout a childs educational years, i have no empirical 'evidence' to substantiate or negate claims by the education legislators.Can you add anything that may stop my brain exploding? thanks.You're in my favourites!!
Hi, thanks for making this blog, helps me to answer some questions about life.. i am 25 and lately just started to wonder all this questions, how the mind works and cant stop myself from thinking about it, cant actually concentrate on anything else. keep posting please. Jana
Nice site ..i just dropped here from David Baxter forum nice site.I'm a doctor currently working in infectious and tropical disease hospital in nepal.A different field but i'm interested in your blog .Keep updating i love to read your blogs daily..
Hi Jeremy,
I too am a high school AP and IB Psychology teacher and have found your site to be an amazing resource so far. Is there any way to view some of the blogs you've posted in a "printer-friendly" format. I would love to have hard copies of a few of these, but I see no real way to e-mail them to myself or view a printer-friendly version. You're help is much appreciated.
Thanks!
-Kiki
Hi Dragos, good luck with the blog!
Guru, good for you, sounds like an interesting time in life.
New Tricks, hope your brain hasn't exploded! As you say without empirical evidence it's hard to make a case... good luck with it.
Jana, thanks, will keep posting, don't worry!
Doctor in Nepal (I can't call you by a number!), glad you're finding it useful!
Kiki, try signing up for my 'email updates' (top left of the page) then you'll get an email with each new post in it, which you can then print. I'll also keep your request in mind for future redesigns of the site.