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Presenting Psychology: 10 Ways to Polish Up Your Research Presentation
Gone are the days in which promising scholars could conduct brilliant scientific work, write compelling and cogent articles and books, and be forgiven by all for having no clarity or articulation when attempting to talk about it in person! …If those days existed at all. Scientific communication takes many forms, but virtually all graduate students, faculty,…
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Me, Myselfie, and I: The Psychological Impact of Social Media Activity
Recent research has documented how technology, and social networking sites in particular, have given rise to a growing obsession with impression management and self-presentation online. This raises an important question: Are our relationships with social media healthy?
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Highlights of “Building Minds”
For those who missed “Building Minds: Microchips & Molecules”, here is a taste of the action. For all who packed the CNSI auditorium in May for our annual interdisciplinary symposium, here is a quick trip down memory lane. Enjoy! Gimzewski (’15 symposium) UCLA’s James Gimzewski cited Alan Turing in his talk describing his research on…
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My Graduate School Survival Guide
Disclaimer: Technically, I have not yet ‘survived’ grad school. But, with three out of five years under my belt, I like to think I’ve acquired some useful wisdom. Although there is no one-size-fits-all model for successfully navigating grad school, here I’ll outline some strategies that I find particularly effective for maximizing efficiency and maintaining solid…
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Signal Detection: Decision Making in Uncertainty
We all experience uncertainty: How did I do on that test? What do they think of me? Where did I leave my keys? Is my phone ringing? In these and other uncertain situations, we have to take the evidence we have and make our best guess about the answer. Sometimes we’re right, and sometimes we’re…
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Love Me Tinder: A Psychological Perspective on Swiping
Several months ago, I wrote a post about how online dating has shifted the way people search for and establish romantic relationships in the modern era. Notably absent from that article was any mention of what has become the fastest growing, and arguably the most popular, dating app of the past several years: Tinder. Why…
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How to Take Good Notes: Go Low-Tech
More and more students are opting to take notes on laptops to save trees and – they assume – take better notes. But is this assumption correct? According to the findings UCLA’s Dr. Danny Oppenheimer recently published in Psychological Science , these students are wrong: in a study of note-taking comparing handwritten to typed notes, Meuller…
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How do we see so many colors on a digital screen?
How can we possibly perceive a world of colors from just red, green, and blue, the colors of lights in TV, computer, and phone screens? The answer has to do with the way our visual system is set up: We have three different kinds of cones in the retina which respond most to what we…
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The Top 5 Differences Between Undergraduate and Graduate School
When deciding whether or not to attend graduate school, a lot of prospective students ask how it is different that undergrad. Is it more difficult? Less fun? Stressful? Whether you are thinking of applying to grad school, have a friend/sibling/daughter/son/niece/nephew/etc. in grad school and still don’t quite understand what it means, or are a graduate…
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Outwit, Outplay, Outlast: The Psychology of Survivor
Watching Survivor also offers opportunities for social comparison and reflection, especially when it comes to morals and ethics.