Psychology in Action

Author: Mariana A. Preciado

  • Know When to Put on Rose-Colored Lenses: When Bias is Useful

    The idea of “positive illusions” is one that has been popular in social psychology since Taylor and Brown published their 1988 paper, “Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.” Simply put, positive illusions are biased perceptions of reality that are thought to be good for mental health. For instance, studies have shown…

  • Evidence for Multiple Pathways to Sexual Orientation

    Social scientists have long debated the “true” nature of sexual orientation. In the past, this debate has been characterized as another example of the classic battle of nature vs. nurture/biology vs. society. Today, most acknowledge that a simplistic this or that explanation doesn’t fly for most things and likely doesn’t rightly characterize sexual orientation, either.…

  • The Psychology of Radiation Panic

    A recent McClatchy-Marist poll found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans think a nuclear disaster similar to what happened in March of this year in Japan could happen here. Why do so many people suddenly think that nuclear disaster is likely? Recent research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General might shed some light on the…

  • The Power of Glasses: Evidence-Based Charitable Giving, Part 2

    In the poor, rural Gansu province in China, 10-15% of young students need glasses but only 2% of those kids actually have glasses. To follow up on my previous post on the science of charitable giving, in this post I’ll briefly describe a recent study which found that simply giving these students glasses significantly increased…

  • Who Should Get Your Charity Money? Scientific Perspectives on Giving

    In the past, my partner and I have mostly haphazardly divvied up our good intentions to whichever charities are most easily accessible to us because of advertisements or a person standing in a grocery store parking lot. Lately, we are rethinking that (lack of) strategy. As Yale economists Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel wrote in…

  • Is There Truth in What We See? Motivation and Visual Perception

    I’m going to come out right now as a deconstructionist – I believe that everything we experience is shaped at least in part by our historical time and our social, physical, and psychological context. In other words, I don’t believe that when you and I look at the same object, we are actually seeing exactly…

  • Accurate Representations of Science: Whose Responsibility Is It?

    Here’s a question that’s been on my mind lately: Whose job is it to make sure that the non-scientist consumers of science get it right? I’ve had a few discussions with various psychologists about this lately and they frequently bring up two answers to this question: (1) It’s the consumer’s job. I heard from a…

  • What Can Effect Sizes Do for You? A Quick Tutorial for a Deeper Understanding of Psychological Research

    I listen to a lot of podcasts in which various psychological articles are often discussed (e.g., stuff you should know, radiolab, etc.).  As a psychologist, I am often frustrated when a podcast mentions a study’s finding (e.g., having a sister is associated with better self-esteem than having a brother) but then says something like this:…