Category: psychology
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Context and Aesthetic Judgements
It’s no surprise that perceived context is important in influencing people’s decisions. A recent experiment has shown that people rate pictures as more aesthetically pleasing (and actually experience more pleasure while viewing them) if they believe they come from art galleries. Aesthetic judgments, like most judgments, depend on context. Whether an object or image is…
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Technology in the Classroom
Teachers are using technology in the classroom as a crutch, rather than a tool to increase their quality of teaching, proposes José A. Bowen, Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, and this is why he’s removing computers from his classrooms. Resistance was high, both from teachers and students, but research has linked boredom in…
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Goal Setting and Affluence
You’ve heard of the Yale Goal-Setting Study, right? The one that goes like this: In 1953 a team of researchers interviewed Yale’s graduating seniors, asking them whether they had written down the specific goals that they wanted to achieve in life. Twenty years later the researchers tracked down the same cohort and found that the…
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The Ideal Creative Workspace
Jonah Lehrer suggests that the ideal creative workplace is “a room with blue walls that feels very far away and is filled with references to foreign countries”. Why would these three conditions be conducive to creativity? Colours can influence how we think (in one experiment, red backgrounds were found to make participants more accurate, while…
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The Negative Effect of Positive Thinking
An entire industry has been created and thrives based solely on the theories of positive psychology: self affirmations help to motivate, we are told, and they may even help those with low self-esteem build their confidence. Now research is starting to show the opposite: that self affirmations (or ‘positive self-statements’) have a negative effect on…
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Epiphanies Through Daydreams
Research aimed at discovering how ‘Eureka moments’ are triggered and how these moments of clarity and insight differ from typical methodical reasoning has found that not only are epiphanies more likely when we’re daydreaming, but our state of mind before we tackle a problem is also crucial. They materialize without warning, often through an unconscious…
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Self-Esteem vs Self-Discipline in Children
Self-esteem, we are told, is a great virtue to foster in a child, hence the many school programs to instill it in young children and the self-help experts extolling its benefits to all who will listen. This is folly, says psychologist Angela Duckworth in this interview where she discusses the futility of attempting to enhance…
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The Parental Limit
Birth order and parental influence matter much less than a child’s peer group when it comes to determining behaviour, according to Judith Rich Harris‘ polarising book, The Nurture Assumption. In the ten years since the book’s publication her ideas have gained support from prominent developmental psychologists (notably, Steven Pinker), and now Jonah Lehrer interviews Harris,…
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A Brief Summary of Group Psychology
If, like me, you’re even remotely interested in the dynamics of group psychology you’ve probably already read a couple of these. Nonetheless, these 10 psychology studies highlighted as ‘rules’ governing groups are worth noting: Groups can arise from almost nothing Initiation rites improve group evaluations Groups breed conformity Learn the ropes or be ostracised You become…