Psych Papers

Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran go over 3 popular myths in psychology that have been debunked.

1. Power posing: The idea that body language can influence confidence and behavior.
2. 10% brain myth: The misconception that we only use 10% of our brains.
3. Opposites attract: The idea that people with contrasting personalities are drawn to each other.

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The Good Samaritan Study shows most people forget about ethics/virtues when they’re preoccupied. Seminary students were less likely to help someone in need if they were in a rush. And it didn’t even matter if they were actively thinking about ethics and virtues.

Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss the Good Samaritan Study conducted by Batson and Darley (1973). This was a landmark study in a field within social psychology called prosocial helping.

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How do infants develop the cognitive super powers that enable them to navigate the world? Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss our 3 favorite developmental psychology concepts.

• Object permanence: The understanding that objects continue to exist even when no longer visible. Develops between 7-12 months of age. Tested with the A-Not-B Task.
• Theory of Mind: The ability to understand that others have thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions that may differ from your own. Develops between 4-5 years of age. Tested with the False Belief Task.
• Conservation: The ability to understand that certain physical properties of objects (e.g., how much water is in a glass) remain the same even when their appearance changes. Develops between 7-11 years of age. Tested with the conservation task.

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How do psychologists induce social exclusion in participants? Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss 5 ways psychologists have induced feelings of social exclusion in participants. Methods broadly fall into 3 categories: 1) having participants interact other individuals; 2) having participants interact with computer-controlled avatars (who participants believe are real people); 3) written material manipulations (Chris’s favorite). Researchers seem like they have a fun time coming up with creative ways of making people feel awful about themselves :)

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We surveyed over 600 people on their loneliness and compare their scores across personality traits and demographic groups. How does loneliness differ between men and women? Dog vs cat people? Social media users vs non-social media suers? Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran learn that most people are generally equally and moderately lonely.

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Harlow created the Pit of Despair to produce an animal model of human clinical depression. Monkeys were isolated in the chambers for up to a year, having zero interaction with the outside world. Expectedly, these social animals came out quite disturbed…

Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss Harry Harlow’s early life, the multiple versions of the pit of despair he created, and we learn about the reactions to the study. This study has become one of the most infamously unethical psychology studies to date.

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How important is your name to your identity? In this episode, we review the history of names and our follow-up research on how much people like their names; whether name length influences name liking; and which boys’ names and girls’ names would win in a fight.

We found that people tend to like their names more when they are longer (more characters); and that names like Anthony and Brianna would be most likely to win in a fight.

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How does a study on facial expressions turn into a study on obedience to authority? It started as research to examine whether people have common facial expressions when experiencing different emotions—but then it turned into something much darker, making it one of the most unethical psychology studies. Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss the Carney Landis experiment and the disturbing methods this researcher used to elicit emotional reactions. It was conducted in 1924 so you KNOW it was MESSED up.

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If an out-of-control trolley was heading straight for a dog tied to the tracks, but you could pull a lever to divert the trolley onto a track with a person tied to the tracks, would you do it? What if it was a hundred dogs? How about all the dogs in the world? Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss the follow-up research we conducted where we surveyed over 300 people to examine these questions.

This research was inspired by the previous Psych Papers episode on the bystander effect: https://youtu.be/pCA9fdwaTdU

Check out the video version of this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PyU4PupMc5Q

If you witness an emergency, would you intervene? What if other people were present? Research shows most people wouldn’t help if others are around. Psych PhD Chris Cole and cohost Joseph Tajaran discuss the bystander effect, Kitty Genovese, and the research surrounding these topics conducted by Darley and Latané in 1968. Researchers were interested in why people are less likely to intervene in an emergency if other people are present, and it has to do with the diffusion of responsibility.

Follow-Up Research: This episode’s follow-up research will be released in a separate episode! It’ll be on the topic of how many animals are worth a human life (and gender and political ideology differences in this).

Check out the video version of this episode on YouTube.