I am currently working on a third study that aims to further establish validity of a scale that I have developed which assesses individuals' propensities to believe in unconventional ideas (e.g., conspiracies and the paranormal). I am considering adding another dimension to this validation package that compares people's scores on my scale to their ( Read more... )

Did anyone attend the RMPA conference this past weekend? There were some great speakers including Tom Pyszczynski, C. Daniel Batson, David Myers, and Bill McKeachie (David Kenny was supposed to be there but had travel problems ( Read more... )

Today's post on The Difference Blog is about lying, and the neural and social patterns associated with the activity of deception. Few gender differences have been demonstrated on this subject, but despite this, the myth that women lie more remains. If you're aware of any studies demonstrating a pattern in lying behavior between men and women, I'd ( Read more... )

Recently Zimbardo has been on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1870756) and on the Daily Show.



I think he got a bit wishy-washy on NPR, but he did very well on the Daily Show. Has anyone read the Lucifer Effect yet? Any thoughts?

In the persuasion social psychology literature, authority is often talked about as a decision making heuristic (example: "hey, that guy has glasses, a lab coat, and a clipboard and is usually really big, technical sounding words, he definitely must know what he's talking about, and his product must be good ( Read more... )

I've recently become fascinated by suppressor variables and a couple of interesting ones have appeared in some of my recent studies ( Read more... )

Why did I become a social psychologist ( Read more... )

In the years since 9/11, a debate has emerged between some prominent social psychologists--most notably between John Jost and Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon. An article touching upon this debate was in last month's issue of Psychology Today (a magazine I don't normally read, but was handed a copy of this article because of its ( Read more... )

What are your thoughts on implicit measures (e.g. Implicit Attitudes test; Greenwald, 1998)? Some suggest these measures assess personal beliefs, while others claim these types of instruments determine societal expectations ( Read more... )

Has anyone read Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill? Some of my current projects involve intergroup relations and religion, and this book has been amazingly interesting to me thus far. In it, she interviews all kinds of religious extremists around the world and draws some great conclusions about humanity. For ( Read more... )