Archive

Inequality: Minority disadvantage or White privilege? - And why it matters

In this blog post, I will discuss research showing how framing ethnic inequality in terms of White advantage versus minority disadvantage impacts how Whites and minorities understand inequality and thus how we should address inequality. / more

Grasping the grounded nature of mental simulation

“Mental simulation”—interacting mentally with an object—is an important part of our daily interactions.  We review literature that provides evidence that humans mentally simulate automatically in preparation for object interactions.  We also discuss our research showing how simple object orientation can change mental simulation and thus purchase intention.  This review should provide practitioners and curious intellectuals a primer for understanding this fascinating area of human thought. Our lives are filled with repetitive behavior. Take, for example, your... / more

Bleeding-heart liberals and hard-hearted conservatives: Political dehumanization in the United States

My previous blog post covered new research showing that liberals and conservatives are prejudiced against one another to an equal degree. In this post, I will review evidence that liberals’ and conservatives’ prejudices lead them to dehumanize their political opponents—that is, to see them as less than human. / more

More than meets the eye: Physical sensations influence first impressions

People are special. Person perception is quite different from rock perception, for example. Geologists, those with a rock in their shoe, and pet rock owners aside, the perception of a rock is often merely the perception of a collection of lines and surfaces. Yet people are not simply collections of lines and surfaces. People have inner worlds such as mental states and... / more

What can metaphors tell us about personality?

Our language is filled with metaphors (Gibbs, 1994). We have “bright” ideas, try to stay “balanced”, and feel “close” to others, but sometimes feel “down”, have “dark” thoughts, and “explode” with rage. What is the purpose of such language? 

According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980; 1999), metaphors allow us to understand abstract thoughts and feelings that cannot be directly seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. Stated a different way, we may speak metaphorically because...

Seeing mountains in molehills: Embodied visual perception of the environment

You have likely experienced the phenomenon. Perhaps it occurred on the walk from the train after an exhausting day at the office. Or maybe you noticed it on the uphill trek to class while lugging a backpack stuffed with textbooks. That hill looming in front of you—surmountable most days and probably no more than a few degrees incline —right now looks more like Mount Everest. Likewise, the six-block walk from the train appears to stretch for miles. The... / more

Judging a book by its cover: Prior knowledge determines the effect of embodied cues.

Research has shown that physical experiences can influence metaphorically related judgments. For example, the experience of physical weight influences estimates of value and importance. Careful examination of existing evidence suggests that how much knowledge people have about a target of a judgment determines whether the experience of physical weight influences that judgment. Three studies directly test this hypothesis, finding that participants evaluated a book as more important when it was heavy (due to a concealed weight), but only... / more

Social: why our brains are wired to connect.

Humans have large brains. According to the social brain hypothesis, proposed by Robin Dunbar, the social environment played a large role in the evolution of the human brain’s structure and function. Today, typing “the social brain” in google scholar results in more than 10.000 hits. More than half of those hits refer to papers or books published since 2010. Conclusion: the social brain is a “hot” term in psychology. In his book “Social: Why our brains are wired to connect” Matthew Lieberman outlines his view on why we have a social brain, and how our social brain processes the world around us. Applying his view more broadly, he also explains what having a social brain may mean in dealing with social issues such as education, work and building social connections. / more

Why Madonna was right: Music really does make the people come together

In August 2000, global superstar Madonna released the single “Music” from her soon to be hit album. Other than the brilliant lyrics “Do you like to Boogie woogie”, you might remember that one of the lines in the chorus was “Music makes the people come together.” In this post, I will discuss the social psychological research, which suggests that she was more right then even she must have thought. / more

Is banning bossy enough to enact real social change? Celebrity activism and the “Ban Bossy” campaign

Recently celebrity activists such as Beyoncé, Jenifer Garner, and Sheryl Sandberg have thrown their weight behind a campaign to ban the term “bossy” to describe women (banbossy.com, #banbossy). The goal of the campaign is to encourage young women to step into leadership roles and to assert themselves in the classroom and in life. In this blog I highlight the social value of celebrity activism and I highlight important caveats of celebrity activism based on science. / more