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Book review: Willpower by Baumeister & Tierney

September 27, 2011 – 2:41 pm

“Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength”, Roy Baumeister & John Tierney, 2011 I’ve just finished this book, and yet I still couldn’t tell you what it was trying to claim. It’s a grab-bag of research on willpower, nearly all of it done by social psychologist Baumeister and colleagues, and including his celebrated experiments on ego-depletion. […]

Posted in books, News | Comments (18)

When explaining becomes a sin

August 11, 2011 – 8:45 am

As the cacophony of politicians and commentators replaces that of the police sirens, look out for the particularly shrill voice of those who condemn as evil anyone with an alternative explanation for the looting than theirs. For an example, take the Daily Mail headline for Tuesday, which reads “To blame the cuts is immoral and […]

Posted in Reasoning | Comments (34)

They’re Made Out of Meat!

July 7, 2011 – 1:56 pm

“They’re Made Out of Meat” is a short story by Terry Bisson. It’s a great riff on the improbability of the human situation, and particularly relevant to psychologists (e.g. “So … what does the thinking?”) The full text is here. The story has its own wikipedia page, and there’s a YouTube film here. Now, for […]

Posted in Nonsense | Comments (13)

Against Neuroethics

July 7, 2011 – 10:00 am

The BPS has published a discussion paper on “Neuroethics”. Neuroethics is an unnecessary phrase which covers a hodge-podge of ethical concerns for psychology researchers and broader societal concerns over the application of findings from the cognitive neurosciences. The paper, prepared by the impressive team of Carl Senior, Patrick Haggard and John Oates, is mostly a […]

Posted in Theory | Comments (10)

The Rough Guide to Psychology

April 15, 2011 – 2:08 pm

Friend of mindhacks.com and contributor to the original Mind Hacks book, Christian Jarrett has written the “The Rough Guide to Psychology“, published this month, and a right rip roaring read it is too. It’s a whistle-stop tour through all aspects of the science of mind and behaviour, which reveals just how diverse and rich the […]

Posted in Authors, books | Comments (2)

A history of psychology through objects

April 1, 2011 – 8:42 am

This is an early Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machine, from 1945. Note the incorporation of the telephone dial for controvoling the duration of the shock. This is a brass observation hole from St. Audry’s Hospital, Suffolk, England, 1851-1900. Mounted in a door, this peephole allowed doctors and warders to check on a patient locked in solitary […]

Posted in Linkage | Comments (5)

A note on human behaviour

February 15, 2011 – 6:09 pm

Enjoying the Natural History Museum yesterday, I came across this exhibit somewhere in the geology section: The exhibit is a serious of columns, which you pass from right to left. The penultimate column is to illustrate the idea of ice, and you’re invited by a palm shape to put your palm to the column (which […]

Posted in Moving | Comments (4)

The (cut price) Narrative Escape

February 15, 2011 – 5:28 pm

My ebook The Narrative Escape is available at a reduced price for a limited time. Publishers 40kbooks have got a February special offer, meaning that you can read my 6000 or so words about dreams, stories and morality for less than a dollar. UK readers : that’s seventy-one pence! As if the price wasn’t enough […]

Posted in books, News | Comments (4)

Putting Psychology To Work

January 26, 2011 – 3:38 pm

And Lo! Unto the always excellent BPS Research Digest, a child is born! The BPS Occupational Digest. is new blog which will cover news, reviews and reports on how psychology matters in the workplace. It will be curated by friend of mindhacks.com (and contributor to the Mind Hacks book) Alex Fradera. Blogging hasn’t started yet […]

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The psychophysics of policy positions

January 12, 2011 – 8:18 am

In which I suggest applying the methods of experimental psychology to a longstanding question in political science. Many people feel that there is no “real difference” between political parties (for example, Labour vs Conservatives in the UK). Politians are all the same, right? At least superficially, mainsteam parties will all echo commitments to values such […]

Posted in Theory | Comments (21)

Poetic sensitivities

December 27, 2010 – 7:29 pm

Perceptual psychologists have long been interested in limen – the threshold at which a stimulus becomes detectable. The following limen for the different senses, expressed in everyday terms rather than in terms of physical quantities, have a certain poetry to them. I got this information via email as a scan of an (unknown to me) […]

Posted in Hearing and Language, Seeing | Comments (10)

Brain, The Inside Story – AMNH, New York

November 22, 2010 – 9:11 am

The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a new exhibit called “Brain: The Inside Story“. Mindhacks.com‘s New York correspondent, Ben Ehrlich, sends this report: I remember being a kid. I remember being a kid and going on field trips. I remember being a seventh-grade kid in New York City and going on […]

Posted in Inside the Brain | Leave a Comment

The Narrative Escape

October 21, 2010 – 10:46 am

Please excuse me if I interrupt Vaughan’s normal programming to blow my own trumpet: My ebook “The Narrative Escape” was published yesterday by 40k books. ‘The Narrative Escape’ is a long essay about morality, psychology and stories and is availble in Kindle format. From the ebook blurb: We instinctively tell stories about our experiences, and […]

Posted in books, News | Comments (8)

Mindhacks.com revamp

August 26, 2010 – 12:38 pm

We’ve refreshed the engine of mindhacks.com. moving it to WordPress. This should only improve your viewing pleasure, giving us less server downtime and easier commenting. It also means that we can easily see the viewer stats for the site – around 5,000 a day, which is great. It also lets me see that there have […]

Posted in News | Comments (14)

A surprising romantic reappearance

August 7, 2010 – 1:03 pm

A few weeks before they are born most babies show a bias for turning their head to the right, rather than to the left. This bias continues for the first six months after birth. Behavioural biases to one side are interesting to psychologists. They are an example of exceptions to the general rule of symmetry […]

Posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (12)

We interrupt your normal service

August 4, 2010 – 5:37 pm

There will be a brief pause in postings while The Mind Hacks Blog moves to a new home. I’ve disabled comments while this is happening. Full details after we’ve successfully completed moving the furniture behind the scenes (clue: not too much will change).

Posted in News | Comments (3)
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