How do the Rorschach, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the House, Tree Person tests work? Do you reveal something about yourself when you tell stories about pictures or tell what you see in an inkblot or even when you do something as seemingly innocent as drawing a picture of a house? In this episode I try to answer these questions as well as show you how a wonderful poem called How It Will End by Denise Duhamel could be an excellent example of psychology in everyday life.

Can we make learning as fun as it was when you were a child? We can. Listen to Dr. Eugene Geist as he explains the cognitive development theories of Jean Piaget and you'll understand why we are all geared to learn. We actively seek out learning experiences. How can we keep that excitement alive? Find out in this episode and in the episodes to follow as we examine ideas such as constructivism, problem-based Learning, inquiry-based learning and democratic schools. This episode will also be helpful if you need to learn the different stages of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

College teaching needs to change. This doesn't mean using a new fad technique. It doesn't mean dumbing anything down to get "today's students". It does mean that professors need to adopt more of the approaches to teaching that Ken Bain identified in his must-read book, "What The Best College Teachers Do". In this episode I describe one of the key ideas from the book and I show how they could be applied in two specific examples.

Guess what? There's no such thing as "learning style" (the theory that each of us has a preferred way to learn new ideas. There are many supposed kinds of learning styles, such as a visual learning style, an auditory style, kinesthetic, etc.). Don't believe it? Neither did I at first. I was sure for a long time that I personally had a visual learning style. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Listen to what Dr. Daniel Willingham has to say on this topic.

Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a patient in an "insane asylum"? "Asylums" changed names over the years (including "State Hospital" and "Psychiatric Center") and so did the treatment of the mentally ill. Hear from Dr. Jennifer Bazar how we went from chaining people up to hydrotherapy to sexual surgery and finally to what is called "moral treatment". A fascinating walk down the history of psychology with an engaging psychology historian.

Remember those "i-statements" you're supposed to use when you get mad at someone? "I feel ____ when you ____ because ____". Does that actually work? Does talking in this way resolve problems better and not get the other person defensive? We're going to find out. Also, Koko the gorilla died recently. But did she really master sign language? Or is there less to this story than first appears? In this episode we put on our critical thinking caps and take a look.

This week on The Psych Files we take a stroll through the various phases of life: from childhood, to adolescence, into mid-life and then we listen to two interesting voices of men nearing the end of their lives. Some great examples to help you better understand Erikson's theory.

Music researchers analyzed over 700 top Billboard songs (which included examining over 80,000 chords) and they determined that the "Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da" is the most appealing song ever written. How in the world, you might ask, did they choose that (some would say annoying) song?! Let's find out how two key ingredients - surprise and uncertainty - combine to create songs that you really like to hear over and over.

Do "Blue Sky" brainstorming sessions actually produce anything creative? If you've ever sat around with a group of people and tried to "just come up with something creative" you probably found that it's pretty hard. We actually don't think that creatively when we're told to just "throw things out there" and "nothing will be judged". It's often more productive to give people a certain constraint on what they can say. See how researcher Catrinel Haupt-Tromp used as her inspiration the famous children's book "Green Eggs and Ham" to come up with a pretty neat research study on creativity.