Finding The Surprising Gaps in Your Self-Knowledge
Why are people so blissfully ignorant of certain aspects of their personalities?
Take an everyday example: there are some infuriating people who are always late for appointments. A few of these people explain it by saying they are 'laid-back', while others seem unaware that they're always late.
The 12 Psychology Studies of Christmas
1. How to have a happy Christmas
We all want a happy Christmas (or cultural equivalent), but how do we get it? This research into happiness and Christmas suggests that a focus on spending and consumption is associated with less happiness while family and religious experiences are associated with more happiness. Not exactly earth-shattering, but satisfying to quote to little Billy when he complains about his presents.
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When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour
A fundamental mistake we often make when judging other people is assuming that their behaviour mainly reflects their personality. Unfortunately this ignores another major influence on how people behave staring us right in the face: the situation.
New Deepak Chopra iPhone App
Deepak Chopra, author and proponent of alternative medicine, is developing a new series of iPhone applications designed to tackle stress. The first in the series — 'Stress Free' — has just been released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app combines traditional Vedic principles with activities drawn from evidence-based psychological research.
How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us
A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you.
Our Minds Are Black Boxes – Even to Ourselves
We all have intuitive theories about how our own and other people's minds work. Unfortunately psychological research demonstrates that these theories are often wrong. The gulf between how we think our minds work and how they actually work is sometimes so huge it's laughable.
Basking in Reflected Glory
Here in England we have a strange tradition called 'test cricket'. It's a ridiculous game that goes on for five days, stops for tea and bad light, has impenetrable rules, weird names for fielding positions like 'silly-mid-on' and 'short-backward-leg' and which frequently ends, after the aforementioned five days, with neither side victorious.
