Placebo Effects: More Than Medical
It’s “resolution reset” season already. At least that’s what an ad I received yesterday proclaimed. And it set me to thinking …
psychology
In Which I Play the Prediction Game
Not being a person tightly tied to the Gregorian calendar, I have little use for new year’s resolutions and predictions, etc. Yet here I am, in the uncomfortable position of offering a prediction that could perhaps reach a tipping point as early as 2030.
Is US Electoral Politics Irreparably Broken?
In which I try to think and write my way through a bunch of stuff [really, there’s no better noun] in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
Of Roses and Odors and Word Meanings
One of my greatest difficulties as a college professor teaching Introductory Psychology was getting many students to see that commonplace words often have a more restrictive definition in psychology, so that they would use them more precisely in their work. This has long been an issue: common words were used in psychology and given more specific meanings (e.g., “learning” and “instinct”); and psychological terms’ definitions have changed and/or expanded over time (e.g., “psychopathology”). The recent misappropriation of a psychological term for another purpose has brought these issues to mind again.