In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is moral typecasting. Moral typecasting is a concept first described in a 2009 paper by psychologists Kurt Grey and Daniel Wegner. Not everyone agrees that it’s actually a thing, but it’s an interesting idea. It involves casting people …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is concept creep. The term concept creep was first described by psychologist Nick Haslam in a 2016 paper. He wrote that there’s been semantic expansion (i.e. expanded definitions) of words representing various phenomena, so those words now encompass …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is cognitive mapping, the creation of mental maps for navigation. Some people are star navigators, while some can’t find their way out of a paper bag without a GPS. The reason for that likely has a lot to …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week, we’re going to look at the psychology behind selfies. Smartphones and social media have given rise to the age of the selfie, which was the 2013 Oxford Languages Word of the Year. Back in the not-so-distant day, selfies just …
Self-sabotage seems like it should be a pretty unnatural thing to do, but that’s just not the case, so I thought it would be interesting to chat about it. And since I scheduled this post, my friends Cynni Pixy and Doriondori also posted about self-sabotage, so good timing. What self-sabotage is Self-sabotage involves getting in …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is rejection sensitive dysphoria. You may have heard of rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), perhaps in the context of ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder). I was going into writing this post thinking that it was a well-established thing, and I …
This post explores some of the issues that came up in Todd Rose’s book Collective Illusions, which I reviewed a few months ago. Collective illusions are the social norms and expectations that we think everyone else agrees with, when in reality, most people don’t privately agree with those norms and expectations. Yet we’re hardwired to …
Illusions of Normal: How Well Do We Know What Others Think? Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is schema therapy. My friends Wandering Sprout and SH both do schema therapy, so I was curious to learn more and share it with you all. Schema therapy was developed by Dr. Jeffrey Young in the 1990s. Kind …
Boredom—it’s something we probably all experience at some time or another, but some people are more prone to it than others. Let’s start off our boredom discussion with a definition. While there is no single agreed-upon definition, I like this one: Boredom represents a negative experience commonly arising in situations deemed deficient in meaning, interest, …
Violent actions are obviously a bad thing, but what about violent thoughts? It’s not exactly socially acceptable to talk about, which makes it hard to get a sense of how common it is. I would guess that it’s fairly common to have the occasional thoughts of violence, even if they’re just fleeting and there’s no …
