Use StumbleUpon to Find Great Psychology Content
Finding new, captivating psychological writing on the internet can be hard. There's Google, but how do you search for something you don't yet know exists? Some social networking sites, such as Digg, provide one way to find new content, but there isn't much taste for psychology amongst Diggers.
What would be better is a kind of special internet channel for psychology where people voted for content they liked. These votes would then help redirect others to the same content.
Just such a thing exists and it's called StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon covers much more than just psychology - it's got, well, everything - but I've been playing around with it for a few months now and I've found it's excellent for our favourite topic.
Getting started only takes a few minutes and is very easy. You simply install a toolbar on your browser, register, then tell it what subjects your interested in. Tags you'll likely be interested in include psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience. After clicking the 'stumble' button a few times, I guarantee you'll find something of interest.
Here are some new websites I came across just now after hitting stumble a few times:
- Dr. Zimbardo's 20 Hints About Resisting Unwanted Influences On You
- Find out your Autism Spectrum Quotient
- Bottomless Soup Bowl Proves Eyes Are Bigger Than Stomach
Like any social networking site, StumbleUpon uses the power of crowds. What can emerge is that a large group of disparate people all start thinking the same thing. In this series of stumbles it was lucid dreaming all the way:
You can also stumble for videos from the toolbar. Just now I came across an excellent documentary I recommended last year called The Boy With The Incredible Brain about Daniel Tammet who is a (very) high-functioning autistic savant:
Once you get over the slightly random nature of stumbling, it's pretty addictive, so watch out!
» Get started with StumbleUpon.
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Some additional benefits:
1. As you vote like/dislike Stumbleupon learns your tastes and so the chances of stumbling upon items you'll like increases the more you use it.
2. You can contact the people who have put the material on the web.
3. skelliewag.com (the best metablogging site?) highly recommends that bloggers use stumbleupon to increase visitors to their sites.