Here's a joint post between Jess Hartnett (author of Psychological Statistics for Everyone and the Not Awful and Boring blog) and me! Once used only for recreational or spiritual reasons, psychedelics like ayahuasca and psilocybin are emerging as a treatment for people coping with prolonged grief, terminal illness, treatment-resistant depression, substance use disorder, PTSD, eating …
Continue reading Testing psychedelics: What’s the control group?
As we shop for breakfast cereal, body cream, or baby carrots, we have choices. Some versions are billed as “natural” or “organic”. Others are not. When choosing between two similar items, are people more likely to choose the one labeled "natural?"Photo credit: BearFotos/ShutterstockAlt text: Couple chooses shampoo or shower gel and body washcloth in household …
What if you read the dramatic claim that playing a certain video game could reduce your risk of dementia by 25%? I hope you'd be skeptical. You might think that it was a ploy to increase the video game's sales. Whenever you read a claim like this, you should ask to see the evidence. As …
Continue reading This brain game can reduce risk of dementia in seniors. How do we know?
In the textbook's Chapter 6 you read about an Electronically Activated Recorder, or EAR device, which is able to record people's conversations throughout the day. Researchers have used it to estimate how many words people speak per day. You might remember how the original study found no gender difference in words spoken per day. They …
Imagine walking across your college campus at night, a low-visibility situation. As you walk along, what areas of the image stand out most to you? Imagine tapping on the spots of the image where you'd be focusing your eyes during your walk. Imagine you're walking along this path. Tap on areas of the photo that …
Continue reading Where do you look as you walk across campus?
GLP-1 drugs have become widely prescribed and used; their original use was to help people, originally those with Type II diabetes, lose weight. People who take them often notice they experience less "food noise," or internal chatter. As the use of these drugs has become widespread, users have also noticed that they are less interested …
The Association for Psychological Science recently announced the winners of the "Share your Science" competition, in which researchers create short social media posts about their work. One of the winners was Dr. Ren Salig (University of Michigan) who created a short Instagram video about their work on bilingualism. Let's watch it, and come back here …
I just discovered a new series of videos called SciFusion Shorts, which posts well-produced, video interviews with psychology researchers around the world. They're a great place to hear about cutting-edge research and practice research methods concepts such as conceptual definitions, operational definitions, ethics, and graphing correlational results. The researchers use video clips to study resilience. …
Here's another instagram post from Kyle Inspires. This one is about how fast people walk. He's on Youtube and Facebook, too, but here are links to the story on Instagram and TikTok: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSp0Hy1jlwb/?igsh=cGNlaGNhYjR1MThqTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kyleinspires/video/7587465849527667982 What variables does walking speed supposedly correlate with? How strongly does it correlate? Photo: GagliardiPhotography/Shutterstock a) Watch Kyle Inspires' short video …
I've started to get videos from poster Kyle Inspires on my Instagram feed; he's also posted them on TikTok, Youtube and Facebook. Let's work through an example of one of his claims. One of the claims is that members of professional orchestras are much more likely to have been August babies. Can you locate the …
Continue reading Checking out claims about August babies on TikTok/IG