Tag: social psychology

Writing Women Into Psychology

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From Psychology Today: A recent study examining a sample of widely used social psychology textbooks found that the contributions of women and people of color...

Situationism in Psych: Milgram & Stanford Prison Experiments

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This episode of the podcast The Partially Examined Life explores the way that Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience and Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment show that...

How Norms Change

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From The New Yorker: The extent to which we act on our biases is largely dependent upon the social norms within our surrounding environments, which...

When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy

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From The New York Times Magazine: The work of Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist best known for her research and viral TED talk on "power...

Behaviour is Considered More Moral the More Common it is

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From Medical Xpress: New research demonstrates that our view of selfish and altruistic behaviors is dependent upon how common they are; we are more likely to...

People are Intensely Loyal to Groups Which Abuse Newcomers

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In this piece for Aeon, Christopher Kavanagh explores various explanations for why many people are willing to be part of groups and organizations that subject...

Descartes was Wrong: a Person is a Person through Others

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From Aeon: For the most part, the field of scientific psychology has adopted a Cartesian, individualistic understanding of the self. However, it is more likely...

The Desire to Fit In is the Root of Almost All...

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From Aeon: Contrary to the beliefs of many great philosophers, wrongdoing is not primarily motivated by self-interest and greed, but by the desire to fit...

Antidepressants Often Prescribed to Enforce Heteronormativity, Study Concludes

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A new study investigating fifteen years of patient records at a Midwestern hospital found that psychiatrists almost always responded to patient complaints about their relationships by prescribing antidepressants, despite the fact that these complaints had little to do with the DSM criteria for depression. The study’s lead author, Jonathan Metzl, a professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt, suggests that after the decision in 1974 to remove homosexuality from the DSM, psychiatry continued to enforce socially accepted forms of relationships through the prescription of antidepressants.

“Why We Need to Talk About Racism as a Mental-Health Trigger”

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“Some activists have been able to move forward and continue the work because they have access to therapists, healers, spiritual practitioners and networks of...

Critics Push WHO to Remove Transgender from List of Mental Illnesses

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The World Health Organization (WHO) currently lists being transgender as a medical condition and mental illness. Critics argue that the world’s leading health organization...

NIMH Info for Parents on “ADHD” Misleading, Researchers Say

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A new analysis of the information that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) publishes for parents about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) concludes that the children’s experiences and contexts are ignored and that medication is presented, misleadingly, as the only solution supported by research evidence.

The Experiential Democracy Project: A Depth Approach to the Legislative Process

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The basic idea of the experiential democracy project is to supplement conventional legislative or other forms of diplomatic and moral deliberation with person-centered (“I-Thou”) principles of encounter. These principles, which derive from existential-humanistic psychology and person-centered therapy, stress the attempt to engage participants to more intimately understand each other, and through this context to more intimately understand each other’s often conflicting positions on issues of moral import.

“The Social Cure For Mental Illness”

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Allen Frances writes for Huffington Post: “As Aristotle pointed out, we are social animals who can be fully human only when interacting with others. In the US, we worsen the symptoms of our mentally ill by neglecting their needs and excluding them from society. Fortunately, the reciprocal is also true -- we can heal by simple human acts of caring and inclusion.”

“Why San Bernardino Polarized America and What It Means for Our...

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What does the psychology of terror mean for America’s future? Social psychologist Daniel Kort weighs in on what the science of terror management theory, behavioral economics, and political polarization can tell us about where we’re headed.

Ritalin Used to be “Grandma’s Little Helper”

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Eugene Raikhel reveals ads from 1966 where Ritalin, now prescribed largely for ADHD, was marketed as a “kind of mind antidepressant for housewives.”  “I...

“Suicide, Mental Illness Risks Increase During Recessions”

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The latest economic recession led to a spike in diagnoses for mental illnesses, suicide attempts, and suicide, according to report out of the University...

Relieving Poverty Significantly Improves Mental Health

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Giving money to people diagnosed with severe mental health issues can significantly improve depression and anxiety. A new study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Community Mental Health, found that giving about $73 US dollars per month for recreational spending can also reduce social isolation and strengthen a sense of self.

“Psychotic Shooters on the Open Frontier of Profit”

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At CounterPunch, Joseph Natoli connects Big Pharma, mass shootings, and rampant inequality. He writes: “The Brave New World soma strategy to deal with a population that, were they not doped up, might violently disrupt that brave new world, is useful if a society is ‘creatively destroying’ a growing number of its population each day. While the poor have daily evidence of their poverty, a collapsing middle class live in the illusion that they are middle class and just a short distance, not from ruin, but from fame and fortune. They are, in short, heading for a catastrophic break-down. Big Pharma is already set to give us all a ‘soft landing.’”

Pleading Insanity By Genetics Can Backfire for Defendants

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“Genetic explanations for violent crimes may encourage jurors to support an insanity defense, but jurors may also believe the defendant is a persistent threat who will commit more crimes in the future,” Science Daily reports. A study on over 600 participants found that when people read a genetic explanation for a violent murder they attributed less blame to the defendant but recommended a longer sentence.

Nunavut Declares Suicide Epidemic a State of Emergency

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Nunavut, Canada’s largest and northernmost territory, is suffering from a suicide rate that is 10 times the national average. “In the case of Inuit boys 15 to 19,” CBC News reports, “the suicide rate is 40 times higher than those of their peers in the rest of Canada.”