psychology
Fear and Why We Enjoy it
Fear. It’s something all humans share in their arsenal of emotions and reactions. It’s a survival mechanism that we’ve evolved to have, and it’s what has kept us alive for close to up to 200 millennia. It’s a feeling that we both dread and revel in nowadays, especially during every spooky Halloween season. But why […]
Stockholm Syndrome Explained by the Stanford Prison Experiment
Stockholm Syndrome can be referred to as a joke in the popular culture, and many people do not take it seriously as much as other common psychiatric problems such as PTSD, a psychological illness usually caused by a traumatic event like physical aggression. It cannot be treated seriously because there is no medical standard to […]
The Psychology of Facebook
Psych Central’s April Fool’s Day Joke for 2011 was an article that read: “Facebook Revealed to be Psychology Experiment Gone Wrong.” The author used a fake source of Harvard University and several quotes from ‘professor of psychology’ Mark Zuckerberg. This article seemed pretty believable…for about a day. The researchers behind this project claimed to be […]
I <3 Kim Kardashian
They can’t stop talking about her. “Look at how popular and successful she is!” “Look at how stupid and ditsy she is!” “What has she done to be so famous?” … Well, I don’t care if she’s smart or stupid, rich or poor. The only things I see when she’s on the screen are those […]
The Magic Facebook Mirror
“Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all” says the evil Queen of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I don’t deny that growing up on Disney gave me a somewhat skewed sense of reality at times. Wouldn’t it be nice to all have our own magic mirrors, constantly reminding us how wonderful […]
Moral Code
Why is it wrong to kill babies? Why is it wrong to take advantage of mentally retarded people? To lie with the intention of cheating someone? To steal, especially from poor people? Is it possible that Medieval European society was wrong to burn women suspected of witchcraft? Or did they save mankind from impending doom […]
Creamy Corn or Two-Dollar Cookies? The Rise of Behavioral Economics
Imagine that you’ve just spent the whole morning working non-stop. You’ve been hushing your stomach grumblings for the past hour and you cannot concentrate on anything but your hunger and that devastatingly slow-ticking clock. Another hour passes and that long awaited lunchtime break has finally come around. All you know is that you need food, and […]
A Portrait of Perception
Many a scientist has noted in the light of recent discovery that what has been scientifically elucidated has often been artistically intuited even hundreds of years before. Many phenomena of psychology or even physics have been illuminated first through the intuition and hypersensitive reflection of art. Illusions within the visual arts that modify perception of […]