Paul Krugman’s Arguing with Zombies (2020) identifies “zombie ideas”—repeatedly refuted ideas that refuse to die. He offers economic zombie ideas that survive to continue eating people’s brains: “Tax cuts pay for themselves.” “The budget deficit is our biggest economic problem.”…
Posts published in “talk psych”
In a long-ago experiment by Columbia University social psychologist Stanley Schachter, groups discussed how to deal with fictional juvenile delinquent “Johnny Rocco.” One “modal” group member (actually Schachter’s accomplice) concurred with the others in arguing for leniency and became well…
A recent Templeton World Charity Foundation conference, Character, Social Connections and Flourishing in the 21st Century, expanded my mind, thanks to a lecture by famed evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. This much about him I had known: His multilevel selection…
Caring parents understandably want to protect their children from physical harm and emotional hurt. We do this, we presume, for their sakes. And, if the truth be told, we do it for our own as well. Many of us knowingly…
Cognitive dissonance theory—one of social psychology’s gifts to human self-understanding—offers several intriguing predictions, including this: When we act in ways inconsistent with our attitudes or beliefs, we often resolve that dissonance by changing our thinking. Attitudes follow behavior. That…
If you have watched a 2019 Democratic Party debate, you perhaps have taken note: While Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker glide smoothly through their spoken words, Joe Biden sometimes hesitates, stammers, and stumbles. Is he just less mentally…
Bill Gates wants people he hires to read two of his favorite books: The Better Angels of Our Nature, by psychologist Steven Pinker, and Factfulness by the late Hans Rosling. I, too, have loved these books, which form a…
“Death is reversible.” So began NYU medical center’s director of Critical Care and Resuscitation Research Science, Sam Parnia, at a recent research consultation on people’s death experiences during and after cardiac resuscitation. Biologically speaking, he explained, death and cardiac…
A tweet from my colleague Jean Twenge—a world-class expert at tracking youth well-being in massive data sets—alerted me to the recently released 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Among its dozens of results, which you can view here,…
Photo courtesy Virginia Welle At a recent Teaching of Psychology in Secondary Schools workshop hosted by Oregon State University, I celebrated and illustrated three sets of big ideas from psychological science. Without further explanation, here is a quick synopsis.…
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.” This wisdom, often attributed to American historian Daniel Boorstin, suggests a sister aphorism: The great enemy of democracy is not ill will, but the illusion of…
“Do something!” shouted a lone voice at Ohio’s governor during a post-massacre candlelight vigil in downtown Dayton. Others soon chimed into what became a crowd chant, which has now challenged Congress to, indeed, do something in response to the repeated…
On 48 occasions during his recent testimony regarding Russian election interference, former special counsel Robert Mueller—seeming “confused,” “uncertain,” and “forgetful”—asked to have questions repeated. Was Mueller, who turns 75 this week, exhibiting, as so many pundits surmised, “cognitive aging” or…
Mexican immigrants, President Trump has repeatedly told his approving base, are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In this week’s West Virginia rally he highlighted Mollie Tibbetts’ accused “illegal alien” killer as a vivid example. Hence the wish to…
How you and I feel about our lives depends greatly on our social comparisons. We feel smart when others seem dimwitted, and grateful for our health when others are unwell. But sometimes during social comparisons our self-image suffers, and we…
You surely know why you chose your town, your partner, and your vocation—all for good reasons, no doubt. But might other unknown reasons—operating below the level of your conscious awareness–also have nudged your choices? Such is the implication of…
What virtue is more needed in today’s contentious and polarized world than humility? We need deep-rooted convictions to fuel our passions, but also humility to restrain bull-headed fanaticism. Along with curiosity and skepticism, humility forms the foundation of all…
“Self-consciousness [exists] in contrast with an ‘other,’ a something which is not the self.” ——C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940 We are, always and everywhere, self-conscious of how we differ. Search your memory for a social situation…
It’s a core lesson of introductory psychology: Intergroup contact reduces prejudice (especially friendly, equal-status contact). As hundreds of studies show, attitudes—of White folks toward Black folks, of straight folks toward gay folks, and of natives toward immigrants—are influenced not just…
There’s bad news and good news about Americans’ race relations and attitudes. The bad news: People perceive race relations as worsening. In a 2019 Pew survey of 6637 Americans, 58 percent said that U.S. race relations are now “generally…