Talk Psych to Me

A strange thing happened while we were recording Episode 11 on the topic of infectious mass reactions. We had one ourselves.

Did it happen to you too?! Tell us over:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

We are up again two infections right now: COVID-19 and panic. In this episode, Tania and Brian break down the psychology of mass panic (like panic shopping, dance plague, and penis panic), moral panic (like xenophobia), and individual panic. They explain why mental health = physical health and share their favorite ideas for how to keep your cool.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• Collective Behavior by Turner, Ralph, and Killian (1993). 
• Folk Devils and Moral Panics by Cohen (3rd edition - 2001).
• Medieval and Renaissance Medicine by Gordon (1959).
• Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias by Bartholomew and Radford (2003). 
• Tarantella Dance video
• “Protean nature of mass sociogenic illness” by Bartholomew and Wessely (2002).
• “A brief history of hysteria: From the ancient to the modern” by Trimble and Reynolds (2016).
• “Spasms of the Soul: The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic in the Age of Independence” by Nasser and Shiraz (2014). 
• “Does stress alter everyday moral decision-making?” by Starcke et. al (2010).
• “Myeloid differentiation architecture of leukocyte transcriptome dynamics in perceived social isolation” by Steven Cole et. al. (2015) 
• Lecture: The health and psychological effects of translating emotional experiences into words by Pennebaker (2017). 

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

Continuing from PART I of the episode on nonverbal communication, Brian and Tania talk about the significance of time in communication (aka chronemics), artifacts, paralinguistics, and cross cultural differences.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• Communication In Our Lives by Wood (2015).
• "Communicative Silences: East and West" by Bruneau & Ishii (1988). 
• Perspectives on Silence by Tannen & Saville-Troike (1986).
• "African American English: Implications for school counseling professionals" by Day-vines, et. al. (2009).
• "When timeliness matters: the effect of status on reactions to perceived time delay within distributed collaboration" by Sheldon, Thomas-Hunt, & Proell (2006).
• “The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity” by Bellezza, Gino, & Keinan (2013).
• That's Not What I Meant! by Tannen (2011).

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

Is 93% of all communication really nonverbal? Find out if this famous psych stat is truth or lore. See why Professor X puts the x in proxemics: the study of space in communication. Then head over to PART II of this episode.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• "Decoding of inconsistent communications" by Mehrabian & Wiener (1967). 
• Proxemics by Hall et. al. (1968).
• Communication In Our Lives by Wood (2015).

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

What makes someone popular or unpopular? What are the pros and cons of popularity? And what was Brian's social status in high school?

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• “The neural bases of social pain: Evidence for shared representations with physical pain” by Naomi Eisenberger (2012) 
• “Myeloid differentiation architecture of leukocyte transcriptome dynamics in perceived social isolation” by Steven Cole et. al. (2015) 
• “Dimensions and types of social status: A cross-age perspective” by John Coie, Kenneth Dodge, & Heide Coppotelli (1982) 
• Popular: Finding Happiness and Success in a World That Cares Too Much About the Wrong Kinds of Relationships by Mitch Prinstein (2018) 
• “What Ever Happened to the ‘Cool’ Kids? Long‐Term Sequelae of Early Adolescent Pseudomature Behavior” by Joseph Allen (2014) 
• Psychology of Popularity course on Coursera by Mitch Prinstein 
• "Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame" by Donna Rockwell & David Giles (2009)

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

Got cognitive dissonance? Learn helpful tips for either lying to yourself about it or growing as a person.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Bonus: Watch Roi Ben-Yehuda's video on how to shake up your identity and "offend yourself"

Further Reading:

• The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group by Aronson & Mills (1959)
• When Prophecy Fails by Fesinger, Riecken & Schachter (1956)
• Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance by Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
• Effect of the severity of threat on the devaluation of forbidden behavior by Aronson & Carlsmith (1963)
• Adaptive Self-Regulation of Unattainable Goals by Wrosch et. al. (2003)
• A challenge to human evolution—cognitive dissonance by Perlovsky (2013)
• Respectable Challenges to Respectable Theory by Vaidis & Bran (2019) 
• What Is Cognitive Consistency, and Why Does It Matter? by Gawronski & Brannon (2019)
• Consistency-based compliance across cultures by Petrova, Cialdini, and Sills (2007)
• Preference for consistency: The development of a valid measure and the discovery of surprising behavioral implications by Cialdini, Trost, & Newsom (1995)
• The Consistency Principle in Interpersonal Communication by Mojzisch et. al. (2014)
• Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs by Taber & Lodge (2006)

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

Ever feel like you don’t have enough time or that time is dragging on? Sure, we can’t control clock time, but we can learn to control brain time.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• Psychological time as information by Zakay (2014)
• Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by Hammond (2013) 
• Does being bored make us more creative? by Mann and Cadman (2014) 
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Csikszentmihalyi (2008) 
• The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception by Kramer, Weger, and Sharma (2013)
• The Possibilian by Bilger (2011)
• Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being by Rudd, Vohs, and Aaker (2012) 
• Vacationers happier, but most not happier after a holiday by Nawijn et al. (2010)
• You’re having fun when time flies: the hedonic consequences of subjective time progression by Sackett et al. (2009)

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

Let's talk winning and losing psychology, including body language, power posing, almost losing, almost winning, BIRGing, CORFing, and how to be a great loser.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• The spontaneous expression of pride and shame: Evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays by Tracy and Matsumoto (2008)
• Power Posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance by Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010)
• P-curving a more comprehensive body of research on postural feedback reveals clear evidential value for power-posing effects by Cuddy, Schultz, and Fosse (2018)
• Can losing lead to winning? by Berger and Pope(2011)
• Without my medal on my mind: counterfactual thinking and other determinants of athlete emotions by Kudrna, Kavetsos, Foy, and Dolan (2016)
• Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies by Cialdini et. al (1976)
• The development of Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRG) and Cutting off Reflected Failure (CORF) measures by Spinda (2011)
• The effects of the win/loss record on cohesion by Boone, Beitel, and Kuhlman (1997)

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

Understand learned helplessness and its flip-side, learned hope. Discover a new thing you can blame on your parents. Find out why optimism can get us into trouble, but hope can make us live longer. And learn the best self-motivation hack.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

We've made a donation to the ASPCA in honor of the animal research mentioned in this episode.

Further Reading:

• Charisse Nixon's learned helplessness test (2007) 
• Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience by Maier, & Seligman (2016) 
• Learning helplessness in the family: Maternal agency and the intergenerational transmission of depressive symptoms by River, Borelli, Vazquez, & Smiley (2018)
• The Adult Hope Scale by Snyder, Irving, & Anderson (1991)
• Longitudinal effects of hope on depression and anxiety by Arnau et. al (2006)
• Hope uniquely predicts objective academic achievement above intelligence, personality, and previous academic achievement by Day et. al (2010)
• Having the will and finding the way by Reichard, Avey, Lopez, & Dollwet (2013)
• Hopelessness predicts mortality in older Mexican and European Americans by Stern et al. (2001)
• Brief online training enhances competitive performance by Lane et. al (2016)
• The inner speech of behavioral regulation by Dolcos & Albarracin (2014)

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings

What is self-control, when do you need it, and how do you get it? In this episode, Brian and Tania talk amygdala hijacking, road rage, delay of gratification, and willpower hacking. Collect new self-control tools, and see what happens when our hosts attempt to re-create the famous Marshmallow Test.

Talk psych to us:
Instagram: @talkpsychtomepodcast
Email: [email protected]

Further Reading:

• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (1995)
• Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification by Mischel, Ebbesen, and Zeiss (1972)
• Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later by Casey et al. (2011)
• Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes by Watts, Duncan, and Quan (2018)
• Rational snacking: Young children's decision-making on the marshamllow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability by Kidd, Palmeri, and Aslin (2013)
• Does self-control improve with practice? Evidence from a six-week training program by Miles et. al (2016)
• Everyday temptations: an experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control by Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster, and Vohs (2012)
• Limbic activity modulation guided by functional magnetic resonance imaging-inspired electroencephalography improves implicit emotion regulation by Keynan et. al (2016)
• Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: an evaluation of temptation bundling by Milkman, Minson, and Volpp (2013)
• “I Don’t” versus “I Can’t”: When empowered refusal motivates goal-directed behavior by Patrick and Hagtvedt (2012)
• When cheating would make you a cheater: Implicating the self prevents unethical behavior by Bryan, Adams, and Monin
• I forgive myself, now I can study: How self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination by Wohl, Pychyl, and Bennett (2010)

Produced by Scarlet Moon Things
Research by Kim Keating
Music by Barrie Gledden, Kes Loy, and Richard Kimmings