Behavioral Psychology
Teenagers Who Self-Harm, 20 Years Later
When mental health conditions appear during the teenage years, one of the most complex questions is what the long-term implications are. Some conditions tend to be life-long, but for behaviors like self-harm, it’s harder to know what to expect over the course of decades. Part of the reason our knowledge in this area is still…
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The Health Benefits of Playfulness
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It also makes him less healthy, less physically fit and less likely to lead an active life. That second part isn’t from the original proverb. Rather, it’s from a study published this month in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. In the study, researchers looked to…
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3 Reasons People Procrastinate at Bedtime
It’s possible to procrastinate on almost anything, and that includes going to sleep. You feel the urge to fit just one more activity in before you call it a night, and before you know it your bedtime is far behind you. To learn more about why people end up going to bed later than they…
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Male Attractiveness: Is It All in the Upper Body?
It’s one thing to judge someone’s attractiveness based only on their looks, without considering their personality or non-physical traits. But researchers from Australia and the United States went a step further: they took people’s faces out of the equation too. In a study published this month, they created what could best be described as Tinder…
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How Social Media Influences Offline Behavior
What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook? Maybe not. Considering how much time we spend on social media, it makes sense that our online interactions could affect our behavior IRL. And researchers are increasingly finding that this is the case, for better and for worse. Let’s start with the “better.” A little online peer pressure…
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Media Literacy: An Essential Twenty-First Century Skill
Here’s an idea you won’t here about in, well, the media: we should have media literacy classes in schools. Despite how much information we get from the media, we don’t talk much about how to critically evaluate the things we see on TV or read in the papers. But not helping students learn how to…
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John Watson
John Watson 1878 – 1958 John Watson is considered the father of behaviorism due to his opposition to the mainstream psychological view of the unconscious and psychoanalytic thought. To the behaviorist, the outward expression of the self is all that can be measured and therefore the only variable worthy of exploration. His lecture at Columbia…
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Edward Thorndike
Edward Thorndike 1874-1949 Edward Thorndike is best known for his work with animal research, spending the majority of his career at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. He is most famous for his ‘trial and error learning’ theory and advancements in learning theory, behaviorism and educational psychology.
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B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner 1904-1990 Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born in a small Pennsylvania town. His father was an attorney and his mother a housewife. His family life was described as old-fashioned and hard working. Skinner received his Bachelor’s degree in English in hopes of becoming a writer. He wrote for the school paper but saw…
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Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov 1849-1936 A Physiologist by training, Ivan Pavlov’s most famous experiment in psychology began as a study of digestion. Although very concerned with biases and controlling for variables, during his experiment he noticed that his subjects (dogs) would illicit a salivation response prior to being presented with food. He began to explore this phenomenon…
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