Too Many Pipes For One Classroom

The Alpha Male Myth

2012-01-20T13:06:00.002Z

Interesting article about the myth of the alpha male in Evolutionary Psychology. Might be good for evaluation of attraction...

Test Your Senses

2011-12-15T13:50:00.001Z

Here's an interactive test to see how good your senses are...

Waist To Hip Ratio Reconsidered

2011-11-29T08:52:00.002Z

Here's an article that might be useful for some evaluation points when talking about the evolutionary theory and the WHR...

The Matching Hypothesis and Celebrity

2011-11-23T15:28:00.002Z

There's a page here about this... Look at it!

Can we think of any couples that aren't matched?

Why Do People Laugh at Sick Jokes?

2011-03-21T08:52:00.001Z

Article on the BBC website here...

Illusions and Neuroplasticity

2011-03-17T10:03:00.002Z

And then go here...

Illusion Of Control

2010-12-06T14:36:00.001Z

Good article by Ben Goldacre of Bad Science on the illusion of control bias...

Thatcher Illusion

2010-09-16T10:13:00.003+01:00

With partial explanation here:

5O First Dates

2010-09-14T13:05:00.003+01:00

The film 50 First Dates is based around Drew Barrymore, who has a neurological condition that causes her memories of the day to be erased during the night.

Here's a case study of this happening in real-life.

Are We Really Attracted To Our Relatives?

2010-09-14T13:03:00.001+01:00

Freud thought we may be unconsciously attracted to our relatives - especially our siblings, our parents, even grandparents.

Here's a recent study that suggests he might be right.

Late Tips for Valentine's Day

2010-02-22T13:22:00.002Z

The BPS research digest gives lots and lots of excellent dating tips for men and women.

Basically, the Psychology of pulling....

The Lucifer Effect

2010-01-28T15:29:00.002Z

Zimbardo's - good stuff for AS Social Psychology

GO HERE

Milgram Stuff

2010-01-22T13:53:00.002Z

All kinds of quizzes and interactives here.

Evidence That You DO Marry Your Father...

2009-11-09T11:35:00.002Z

Research here seems to indicate that Freud and Bowlby etc might be right; we do end up marrying people like our parents and maybe this is due to a template for attraction / relationships developed at an early age?

Go find and then take a good look at your parents

Gay Men's Faces

2009-11-05T08:07:00.001Z

Gay Men prefer Masculine faces

c/o of Ben W-B

Murderous Genes

2009-11-04T08:28:00.002Z

A Murderer has his sentence reduced because of 'aggression genes'? Here's where the Free Will vs Determinism debate kicks off...

More about it here.

More On Sexual Selection

2009-10-21T08:29:00.002+01:00

Little article on Human Reproductive Behaviour

Lee's Love Styles...

2009-10-21T08:23:00.003+01:00

There's a quiz to tell you what Love Style you are...

100% accurate.

Relationships

2009-10-13T14:08:00.003+01:00

Lots of studies and theories here - could be useful!

Bits and bobs related to understudied relationships.

Some very surprising experiments on relationships.

A summary of the formation of relationships.

Are You Faceblind?

2009-10-05T10:54:00.002+01:00

Go here and take part in the experiments.

And you can go here if you want to find out more about Prosopagnosia. Some interesting summaries of current research / theories / ideas etc.

Make Yourself Sick

2009-10-05T10:12:00.003+01:00

There are lots of woozy images out there in Perceptual Illusion land but this is one of the better ones...

Stolen from Richard Wiseman's excellent blog

Facial Symmetry

2009-09-28T13:20:00.003+01:00

Remember what I said about symmetry and attractiveness? Here's the test.

Get a good picture of yourself and see what happens. Print out the results and let us all see...

Here's me as I am in all my asymmetrical splendour:

And here's the mirror combinations:

Mmmm....

Ugliness and Aggression?

2009-09-28T12:05:00.004+01:00

Is there really a link between how you look and how aggressive you are?

And while you're on the BPS Digest page, subscribe to it; lots of good stuff appearing all the time...

Kevin Chappell

2009-09-16T13:48:00.002+01:00

Here's a really good article about Kevin Chappell (from the Visual Disorders DVD)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

2009-09-16T13:35:00.004+01:00

Here's an article about him. You really should have looked here.

DaveSaid

2009-03-05T09:30:00.001Z

A website for AQA Psychology... worth a look...

Flipping Dancer

2009-03-05T09:28:00.004Z

Which way is she turning? Can you make her turn the other way?

Ok, so it probably doesn't work on here, it does work here though...

2008 Conference - Profiling

2008-08-21T10:22:00.006+01:00

There are a number of quick tests you can use to try to understand students a little better...

How about checking out their left/right brain level?

You could find out if they are an owl or a lark...

Get them to draw a pig...

Try out a colour test... 1 2 3

You could even uncover their star wars twin... (perhaps more our star wars era than theirs, but as long as it helps you to understand them!)

New Psych Blog

2008-03-11T17:55:00.002Z

There's a new Psych blog that just nicked the Oedipus thing - apparently it's several Senior Examiners, including one that used to work here. Might be worth a look in the future....

2008-03-09T10:45:00.001Z

Worth the time it takes to load for sheer novelty value.

2008-03-09T10:23:00.001Z

The Oedipus Complex : The Game

Depression Questionnaire

2008-03-06T11:20:00.002Z

On-line questionnaire for identifying symptoms of depression. Read carefully before answering.... you might not like the response!

Dreaming...

2007-11-28T09:49:00.001Z

For use in the poster task...

Jung's theory of Dreams 1

Short general article on the development and history of dream theories...

More intellectual article on dream theory Beyond Freud and Jung.

The whole of Freud's famous book on interpreting dreams!

Short summary of Freud's Dream Theory.

Good chapter on Dream Theory (including Freud and updates)

Philosophy and Freud's Dream Theory.

Activation-Synthesis Theory at Erratic Wisdom

Activation-Synthesis at Everything 2

Reverse Learning and Activation-Synthesis.

Memory Consolidation theory

Some evidence for Memory Consolidation Theory.

Long but reasonably readable article on all the theories of dreams

Are You A Lark Or An Owl?

2007-11-16T09:26:00.000Z

Go to this page and complete the questionnaire.

This is also a decent revision page - plenty of old and new information here for the essay that's to come in a few weeks...

Colour Constancy

2007-11-15T09:54:00.000Z

Here is the page on colour constancy that could be useful for one of the Perception essays....

Trippy Eye

2007-09-21T14:05:00.001+01:00

Or Motion Aftereffect illusion...

This was found in class by Nathan and works as a pretty good example of what we were talking about in class...

The Joy of Visual Perception

2007-09-04T14:52:00.000+01:00

This is a really great site for visual illusions. Check out the 'Fun things in vision' section.

Gender and Helping Behaviour (Coursework)

2007-06-27T16:35:00.000+01:00

This one looks at similarities between males and females in terms of most psychological variables - brief reference to Eagly and Crowley on helping behaviour.

Here you can examine the effect of sex and mood on helping.

This time it's Eagly and Crowley's meta-analysis in detail.

Gender related traits and helping behaviour.

Predicting helping behaviour - focused on gender roles .

Research for fear

2007-06-25T11:11:00.000+01:00

There's a good write up on this link about Mineka and how she taught monkeys to fear.

http://www.loc.gov/loc/brain/emotion/Mineka.html

'Laboratory-reared rhesus monkeys do not show a fear of snakes, so this fear is not innate. After lab-reared monkeys observed for only a few minutes a wild-reared monkey reacting with intense fear to a live boa constrictor...'

Gender & Conformity (Coursework)

2007-06-22T14:38:00.000+01:00

There is an incredibly useful article available on blackboard for this project title. Go to the coursework resources section under AS Psychology.

Coursework Proposal Form

2007-06-22T09:55:00.000+01:00

In case you're bored or confused...

... you might fancy having a trial go at the coursework proposal form... here it is... this is what we'll be filling in the week i come back from Paris...

remember, you can be getting on with the first draft of your introduction while i'm away...

Gender and Obedience (Coursework)

2007-06-21T12:27:00.000+01:00

Table for Milgram experiments around the world - some specify differences in results using male and female participants. Extract from a book including a section on gender differences in obedience.

Eyewitness Testimony (Coursework)

2007-06-21T11:44:00.000+01:00

Study from Cornell Uni showing how memory of an event can be affected by our judgment of the person involved - read on.....

Faulty memory issues (Coursework)

2007-06-21T11:31:00.000+01:00

More Loftus material here. This one has useful reference details too!

Leading Questions & Eyewitness Stuff (Coursework)

2007-06-21T11:27:00.001+01:00

Useful link to an article by Loftus. This covers loads of her own research as well as reference to a study by Harris on leading questions and the height of basketball players...

More Cwk things

2007-06-21T11:16:00.000+01:00

Perceptual Set - with some ambiguous figures

Change Blindness Demo - someone was thinking of doing this I think...

More Change Blindness

And even more Change Blindness links

Environmental Stressors - scroll down for an intro.

A wiki on environmental stressors - some good references

Online book on Aggression

Schemas - intro

mindhacks and matt ruff

2007-06-20T22:31:00.000+01:00

i dont know if this link has been posted further back in the archives here, but its a blogg thats definately worth a look. www.mindhacks.com . its regularly updated and has links to articles on new psychology research on pretty much anything. a little taster of whats on the site:

"Mirror touches:
Nature reports on a recently discovered form of synaesthesia where affected individuals actually feel a sensation when they observe someone else being touched.
Synaesthesia is a condition where senses become crossed, so people might seeing colours when they encounter numbers, or tastes when they hear certain words."

ive found out some really odd things on there.

i read saxon's blogg entry on sybil, a film about a girl with MPD, and on a similar note:

set this house in order is worth a peek if your into that kinda thing.

Some sources for Coursework

2007-06-20T09:31:00.000+01:00

I'll add these when I find them:

Something on Gender and Conformity - you have to scroll down and look!

more on gender and conformity here and here and here and here

helping behaviour is here and here (general social psych articles/slides/powerpoints etc) and here

webpage for Elizabeth Loftus

An Abstract of a study on conformity and age

Heyer and Barrett abstract on interference and sensory modality

allport and postman schema study

bits and bobs about schemas - useful as a starting point for searches

interference - Underwood and another article on Underwood himself

more studies on interference - scroll down

the piliavin helping behaviour experiment on the subway

lots of experiments on helping behaviour

intro to helping behaviour

large article on State Dependent Memory and Forgetting

online book on memory and forgetting

fear and appearance of animals

even better on fear and appearance of animals

Isabel Quaresma, Portuguese Chicken Girl

2007-04-27T11:31:00.001+01:00

Isabel was born in 1970 Tabua, Portugal to a mentally deficient mother. Isabel was the only child of three not to be fathered by a family member. Isabel was found at the age of nine and had spent the last eight years shut up in a hen-coop, deprived of human interaction and socialisation. Members of the neighbourhood regarded the situation as a family matter and would not get involved. Isabel was finally found and taken to hospital where a series of tests were conducted. After these tests she was sent back to the family who had treated her so badly.

For a nine year old, her growth was seriously stunted. She wasn't toilet trained and she could not talk. Isabel held her arms in the position of hens wings and the palms of her hands were calloused. She had been fed on scraps (the same as the hens feed) and one eye was affected by a cataract, supposedly due to a chicken scratch. She flapped her arms and clawed the ground with her feet to show emotion.

Eventually Isabel was taken to an institution for handicapped children. Eighteen years later she still hadn't grown much and made little progress generally. She could understand simple orders but had she been asked to fetch two items she would only be able to understand one of the two orders at the time and could only retrieve one of the items. Isabel had an estimated mental age of a two year old.

Isabel did show more signs of progression socially than in any other area. She was able to interpret expressions of others and understand whether they were happy or sad. Physically she had learnt to walk but still suffered a delicate stomach. Isabel was still unable to talk.

2007-03-21T23:39:00.000Z

On average, there are 301 baked beans to a regualr sized can. (apparently)

Joke

2007-01-25T20:02:00.000Z

Three women are being tested for the armed forces, on how well they obey orders. They are given a gun, and told to go into a room, where their husband is sitting, and shoot him.
The first woman says straight away that she cannot shoot her husband.
The second woman goes into the room, and after a few seconds, comes out and tells the men that she could not shoot her husband.
The third woman goes into the room, and, after muffled bangs, comes out again. She wipes her brow, and says, "The gun wasn't loaded, so I had to beat him to death with the chair!"

(Circulated the internet a few years ago.)

2007-01-23T15:49:00.000Z

I put up some Freud links if useful to anyone.... really I just wanted an excuse to use my winking Freud piccie...

Stanford Prison Study

2007-01-22T16:01:00.000Z

"features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners Abu Ghraib. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University."

Stare At The Little Black Dot

2007-01-15T23:47:00.001Z

Sybil

2006-12-14T18:22:00.000Z

Or you could try and get hold of this, based on the best-selling account of a girl with Multiple Personality Disorders, a very controversial (i.e. no one is really sure it exists) disorder now called Dissociative Identity Disorder...

Fun for all the family at Christmas.

Requiem For A Dream

2006-12-14T18:03:00.000Z

Too disturbing to show in class and not for the faint-hearted but worth a watch if you want to see amphetamine psychosis in full flow and fancy a look at what Electro-Convulsive Therapy is like. Also probably the best anti-drugs film ever.

Very freaky promotional website too.

Anorexia

2006-12-10T16:40:00.000Z

For any AS students, don't miss 'Help Me Help My Child' and Monday 11th December, 20:00, Channel 4. It's all about teenage anorexia and some new kind of therapy, should be useful!! :)

stumbling on happiness

2006-12-07T21:59:00.000Z

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=d_gilbert&flashEnabled=1

click on the above link and watch the video, its good if you have 20 minutes to spare, lots of things about the frontal cortex and the brain .

Dan Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard, and author of Stumbling on Happiness. In this memorable talk, filmed at TED2004, he demonstrates just how poor we humans are at predicting (or understanding) what will make us happy. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:02)

Schizophrenia

2006-12-07T11:11:00.000Z

Everything about Schizophrenia all in one convenient place.

Did You See The Gorilla

2006-11-20T20:44:00.000Z

Excellent article on Change Blindness here...

MRI scans predicting Schizophrenia

2006-11-19T19:34:00.000Z

The London institute of Psychiatry has found that some parts of the brain change slightly just before schizophrenic symptoms appear. They found that you can see the changes in the brain through MRI scans. The theory is that if they can tell if someone is in the early stages of schizphrenia, they can take the relevent steps to delay the effects of shizophrenia, of even get rid of the illness before it develops. I'm not sure when this was found, but the BBC report was published on Novermber 1st 2000, so its fairly old news, but its kinda interesting. This is the link to the BBC news story about it...

Lisa Campbell

Schizophrenics

2006-11-17T13:18:00.000Z

found this about the perception of schizophrenics

cannabis use and risk of schizophrenia

2006-11-15T17:35:00.000Z

found this article which is just generally interesting!

biological ideas of schizophrenia

2006-11-15T16:23:00.000Z

found this news article which looks at how the brains of schizophrenics are different, and how 'grey matter' becomes destroyed.... supports biological stuff

crazy phobia list

2006-11-15T13:43:00.000Z

http://www.phobialist.com/

Leopard Man

2006-11-13T10:58:00.000Z

The Anti-Psychiatry movement...

Stress

2006-11-10T13:19:00.000Z

Are You Stressed?

For lots of other information about stress here is a website that you may want to look at!

www.nclnet.org/health/stress/
Its american though!

Coping with stress

2006-11-10T10:58:00.000Z

Found this BBC site about how to manage stress. Some useful tips and key ideas to help out. No cool pictures though im afraid....

FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE!!!!!!!

2006-11-09T17:31:00.000Z

"Fight or flight"

The stereotypical response to being faced by danger. Blood flow to the limbs and heart rate are increased, the digestive system is shut down. This gives us the physiological back up to either fight for survival, or run like hell. I know which I'd do!!

2006-11-08T22:58:00.000Z

This is just some cool bits that somebody's collected but I quite like some of them...

Stress Stuff

2006-11-08T22:45:00.000Z

This is a page all about stress for you executive types. And handling stress.

Stress definition

2006-11-08T22:12:00.000Z

What is stress?
The body has an inbuilt physical response to stressful situations. Faced with pressure, challenge or danger, we need to react quickly, and our bodies release hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline to help us do this. These hormones are part of the "fight or flight" response and affect the metabolic rate, heart rate and blood pressure, resulting in a heightened - or stressed - state that prepares the body for optimum performance in dealing with a stressful situation.
Very often, modern stresses do not call for either fight or flight. Nevertheless, the same stressing hormones are released as part of the reaction and this natural reaction to challenge or danger, instead of helping, can damage health and reduce the ability to cope.

What causes stress?
Many things can lead to stress:

pressure to perform at work, at school or in sports
threats of physical violence
money worries
arguments
family conflicts
divorce
bereavement
unemployment
moving house
alcohol or drug abuse.

Sometimes, there is no particular reason for developing stress, or it arises out of a series of minor irritations.

Hospital stress

2006-11-08T21:36:00.000Z

Janis studied the relationship between the fear expressed by patients awaiting abdominal surgery and their post-operative recovery. Curiously, patients who showed little pre-op anxiety had poorer post-op adjustment than those who showed moderate levels of fear pre-operatively. Maybe the calm patients were failing to accurately predict the amount of discomfort they would experience after the operation. The patients who showed high levels of anxiety pre-op also fared poorly after the operation. Maybe they are like Weiss’ rats who showed adverse effects from making a large number of coping responses. Thus it is possible that the attempts we make to cope with stressful situations, together with the amount of control and information we have about dangerous situations can influence our bodies physiological response to stressors.
Here is a summary of Janis' results

Relationship between Preoperative Fear and Postoperative Adjustment
Postoperative Adjustment

Preoperative Fear

High Anticipatory Fear
Before Operation
Constantly worried about pain, try to postpone operation, unable to sleep, seek reassurance

After Operation
More likely than others to be anxious, stormy emotional outbursts, afraid of routine examinations

Medium Anticipatory Fear
Before Operation
Occasionally worried about specific features of the operation. Asks for realistic information. Remains outwardly calm.

After Operation
Least likely to show emotional disturbance

Low Anticipatory Fear
Before Operation
Constantly cheerful and optimistic, denies feeling anxious, sleeps well, reads, listens to radio and socialises.

After Operation
Displays anger and resentment to staff

2006-11-07T22:36:00.000Z

When I was at school, our science teacher had what he claimed was a human brain in jar. At the end of term, he'd let us all poke it with our fingers. I always thought it was a sad fate for some noble soul who had donated his body to science, only to end up with his brain rolling about in the hands of grubby fourteen year olds.

Nowdays, of course, you can just do this sort of stuff through the magic of the electronic interweb.....

Stress Explained

2006-11-01T21:12:00.000Z

See this website for some great info about:

What stress is
The causes of stress
Personality types and stress
Stress responses
Stress defences
Managing stress
and even a stress quiz!!

Just keep following the arrows at the bottom of the pages for enthralling psychological fun!!

The Effects On The Body Of Stress

2006-11-01T09:56:00.000Z

Stress stuff here

A Reminder

2006-10-24T09:19:00.000+01:00

Pibloqtoq etc

2006-10-20T15:48:00.000+01:00

Here's a list of CBSs by culture, just in case you wanted to astound your friends and family with your knowledge of obscure mental disorders....

Well, you might...

Checker shadow illusion

2006-10-20T15:40:00.000+01:00

A & B ARE the same shade of grey. Do you believe us yet???
If not, you can find the explanation here.......

illusions

2006-10-09T16:59:00.001+01:00

Gender and Altruism (maybe Conformity/Obedience)

2006-09-27T16:19:00.000+01:00

Here and here (a meta-study - alwasy useful) and here are some links to stuff which may be useful in a gender and bystander apathy / helping behaviour essay and can be used in a gender and conformity (etc) essay (as part of the discussion perhaps...)

Tulving's Cues

2006-09-27T16:08:00.000+01:00

There are some links that may be useful for those doing coursework on cue-dependency theory and Tulving's theory of Encoding Specificity here and here and here....

2006-09-24T22:42:00.000+01:00

Japanese psychiatric art gallery.......

...ILLUSIONS...

2006-09-23T09:45:00.000+01:00

This website has loads of visual illusions that are quite good!

Some of them are rubbish and just have a load of text to read but most of them have got the actual pictures, like this old/young woman one -

2006-09-21T09:52:00.000+01:00

Look Around - The Brain

stereogram thingys

2006-09-18T17:11:00.000+01:00

i have a book of these things at home, apparently called stereograms, you hold them really close to your face and as you move the page away a 3D image appears....

thisssss is a website with some other ones on

....not realllllllly sure if this is a visual illusion or not....

but i posted something

Evolutionary Psychology

2006-09-18T11:04:00.001+01:00

This may be useful for people doing the phobias or the symmetry and attractiveness studies.

Also this on phobias and this, though it is much more complicated and in-depth. And here is a research paper on emotions and evol. psych that may be useful - but don't copy it!

Kate Moss Psychoanalysis

2006-09-06T08:29:00.000+01:00

Kate Moss Psychoanalysed, sort of.

And again. And again. And again.

2006-09-05T11:51:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine has a website about Psychology. You may recognise bits and bobs because I'm always stealing stuff off it.

Rotating Snakes

2006-09-04T11:20:00.000+01:00

The Psychology Blog Of Bridgwater College

2006-09-04T10:36:00.000+01:00

This is intended as a link dump / discussion board for anything vaguely Psychology related.. you are invited to submit pictures / questions / text / news stories etc that can be viewed and discussed by the rest of the class.

Initial suggestion - Visual Illusions, because we'll be doing loads of them...