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Obedience, Power, and Violence
Is an ordinary person capable of committing heinous acts? After the Holocaust (1941-45), many questioned how Nazi soldiers were capable of such senseless murder. Did it take a certain type of person, or did there exist situational factors that enabled their behavior? This historical moment inspired a series of influential psychological studies. Milgram’s Electric Shock…
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The Role of Gratitude in Wellbeing
Unlike earlier psychological work which focused on treating mental illness, positive psychology is a relatively new field that studies the making of a good life building upon the humanistic movement (recall Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). It officially became a domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman deemed it the American Psychological Association’s annual theme.…
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Do I Need to Know Statistics as a Psychologist?
Psychologists work with very interesting and complicated data. It is important that we are motivated to understand how to make sense of such information.
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A Student-to-Student Guide on Navigating Graduate School Applications: PhD
Graduate school is a big commitment that is heavily contingent upon our own drive and self-direction. As a student who recently applied to graduate programs, I distinctly remember how arcane the whole process felt at the beginning. Where do you start? Who do you ask for letters of recommendation? How many do you need? Are…
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Analysis of Variance (ANOVA): Why look at variance if we’re interested in means?
If you aren’t familiar with a procedure called, “Analysis of Variance (ANOVA),” it’s basically used to compare multiple group means against each other and determine if they are different or not. We can determine how similar or dissimilar multiple groups’ means are from one another by asking the question, “How much of the difference is…