In-Mind search

Evolution of Religion

... akbar." Just phrases at first sight.. But what comes to mind? Depending on your background or your personal situation, each of these might prime you with anxiety, or with comfort. Equally so, wars have ... developed abilities, such as  Social Exchange Theory  and  Theory of Mind . This makes religion (as a psychological ... / more

High Maintenance Interaction

... Throughout my academic career, I've come across a variety of nerve-racking pre-exam moments. I remember vividly the various ways my ... of reasoning, you first need to know something about the theory of  self-regulation  (Baumeister, 1998). There are plenty of ... / more

A funny thing happened on the way to romance: How humor influences romantic relationship initiation

... line a good idea, or will it hurt your chances?  The role of humor in courtship is a fascinating puzzle that is beginning to receive ... initiation.  This fits nicely into sexual selection theory (Miller 2000a; 2000b): over time, displaying humor to communicate ... / more

Sense-making through science

... to be orderly and predictable, and an expanding body of research shows that we do not like randomness and a lack of control over ... agent providing order), the second was Darwin’s theory of evolution (no agent, theory allows for a certainl level of randomness ... / more

The good, the bad, and the ugly of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

... The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has been called a lot of things, from a “game changer” and “a breath of fresh air”, to ... the context of body image , social comparison theory states that people will make automatic comparisons to people and images ... / more

Fifty Shades of arousal misattribution and cognitive associations: How Christian Grey is making us believe that women find BDSM “hot”

  Does Fifty Shades of Grey make you wonder if BDSM is arousing? If women secretly want to be ... for the high sales of the book is that aside from mind-numbing-soap-opera romance novels, women have not had access to sexually ... Consistent with Zillmann’s (1998) Excitation-Transfer Theory, the reader may misattribute arousal associated with erotic, ... / more

Political convictions emerge from the gut

In the first part of this three part series, my colleague Ellie Shockley described how rational ... though, scientists have found limited support for this theory. Rather, people have more immediate, gut-level emotional reactions ... and author of the New York Times bestseller  The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion , argues that ... / more

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

... to describe women (banbossy.com, #banbossy). The goal of the campaign is to encourage young women to step into leadership roles and ... Press. Hogg, M. A. (2001). A social identity theory of leadership.  Personality and Social Psychology Review ,  5 , ... / more

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

... related judgments. For example, the experience of physical weight influences estimates of value and importance. Careful ... should reduce the effect of weight. However, an alternative theory with a slightly different explanation makes a different prediction. From ... / more

Seeing mountains in molehills: Embodied visual perception of the environment

... backpack stuffed with textbooks. That hill looming in front of you—surmountable most days and probably no more than a few degrees incline ... or psychological in nature, influence perception ? One theory is that it may help to guide action (Proffitt, 2006; Cole & Balcetis, ... / more