This is a fantastic interview with one of my favorite former professors, Robert Stickgold, who discusses the many important functions that sleep has. He touches on the unity of consciousness, immune function, memory processing, endocrine function and obesity, emotional regulation, … Read More
How Does Toxoplasmosis Affect the Brain?
I highly recommend checking out this excellent interview with one of my favorite lecturers, Robert Sapolsky. He discusses fascinating ways different parasites like toxoplasma gondii are able to take control of behavior via some surprising neurological mechanisms. It appears that … Read More
How do 3D Movies Work?
Before we can address how 3D movies work, we need a brief review on how we experience depth perception in our everyday life. Remember that our retinas are flat surfaces which light stimulates, so how do we go from 2 … Read More
What is Statistical Significance?
Statistical significance is an important concept for understanding when conclusions can (or can not) be drawn from psychological research. Significance can be calculated in a number of different ways depending on the type of data we have collected, and calculations … Read More
Why Do We Still Learn about Phrenology?
Look in just about any psychology professor’s office and you’re bound to find something like the image above: a model mapping out a person’s “faculties” based on the bumps and dents of the skull. This type of skull study was … Read More
What are the Different Areas of Psychology?
This post is a short excerpt from my book Master Introductory Psychology Modern Approaches to Psychology The diversity of questions that psychology aims to answer necessarily requires a diversity of approaches. In attempts to answer questions on all nature of … Read More
Gina Perry’s “Behind the Shock Machine”
I recently read Gina Perry’s book Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments which offers a fascinating investigation into Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on obedience to authority. Perry digs into Milgram’s notes, letters, and book … Read More
Counting Cards, Sending Signals
This is an activity I created to illustrate the concepts of excitatory/inhibitory stimulation and triggering thresholds using a deck of playing cards. Students form groups of 5: of these 4 students will play the roles of dendrites and one student will … Read More
Putting the Pieces Together – How to Remember Early Approaches to Psychology
This is an activity I used in my AP Psychology classes for remembering the differences between several of the early approaches to psychology. I learned this from the Instructor Resources from Schacter, Gilbert, and Wegner’s excellent textbook, and it was … Read More
Key Terms for States of Consciousness
Download a free pdf of this key terms list here: States-of-Consciousness-Key-Terms Find explanations and examples of all of these key terms and more here: Master Introductory Psychology: Complete Edition René Descartes mind-body problem Cartesian Theater philosophical … Read More