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 (also known as pluralistic ignorance) 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 […]
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. Schema therapy was developed by Dr. Jeffrey Young in the 1990s. Kind of like dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), it’s based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), but developed to address the needs of people who weren’t
What Is… Schema Therapy Read More »
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,
Are You Prone to Boredom? Read More »
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
Do You Ever Have Violent Thoughts? Read More »
The Anxious Perfectionist by Clarissa W. Ong and Michael P. Twohig uses an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach to help readers who struggle with perfectionism. I’m a big fan of ACT, and I think it makes a great approach for perfectionism. The book begins by exploring what perfectionism is, including the differences between adaptive
Book Review: The Anxious Perfectionist Read More »
Goal-setting is a popular thing; plug it into Google search, and there are billions of hits. But is goal-setting always the best approach? Maybe identifying and heading in valued directions can be a good alternative some of the time, especially if something like mental illness is making the whole goals thing difficult. Valued directions in
Setting Goals vs. Identifying Valued Directions Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the five-factor model of personality. These factors are often referred to as the Big Five. Personality traits are characteristics that are stable across time and across contexts. The five-factor model includes five personality trait dimensions. These are:
What Is… The Five-Factor Model of Personality (The Big Five) Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week we’re going to look at logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are reasoning errors that people make quite commonly when making arguments. While such fallacies don’t necessarily mean that the conclusion is wrong, they’re a weak link in the argument, and
What Is… a Logical Fallacy Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is belief perseverance. Belief perseverance is the tendency to hold onto beliefs even after the information that they’re based on is shown to be false. I’m a big fan of this line from a paper by Savion (2009):
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In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is the illusion of causality. The illusion of causality is a cognitive bias that makes us see causal relationships between things that aren’t actually related. This often comes into play in superstitions and pseudoscience. We naturally look for
What Is… the Illusion of Causality Read More »
