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Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Resilience on we will be focusing on social psychology and developmental psychology. If you want to read more about developmental psychology, then please check out DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY SECOND EDITION. Personally, I thought an episode on psychological resilience would be rather timely as at the time of writing, a lot of people are going back to school, work or in a few weeks university. Therefore, it was important to talk about psychological resilience during this difficult time. What is Resilience? Moving onto the topic itself, the term resilience is not easy to define as there isn’t a universally accepted definition. However, one definition from my book is: “Resilience is the ability to recover from negative events and adapt to stressful experiences. Resilience is a key skill in life which allows us to be strong and cope with the world’s hardships.” Resilience isn’t always up to you? As much as I would love to be able to tell you all one easy tip to improve your resilience. You need to realise straight away that resilience isn’t up to you. As a result of a few social psychology factors. Like: external factors. These can be your socioeconomic background, your childhood as well as other factors. In addition, your genetics (biological psychology) can play a role in your resilience as your parents’ resilience can be passed on to you and how they bring you up is another critical factor. How to Build Up Resilience? Overall, resilience is about developing and using ways to deal with adversity. This adversity can be anything from bullying to grief to discrimination. Additionally, there are multiple ways how you can increase your resilience. For example, you can nurture and invest in your social relationships as well as you can become useful to others. This allows you to create your own social support network and this means you have multiple people to turn to in your time of need. Also, as you’re becoming useful to people it means these will most likely turn into real relationships. Instead of fake online ones. Furthermore, don’t be rigid. Be flexible. This is important because you need to be able to bend, but you don’t want to break. Therefore, to help your resilience you should accept your feelings and try and adapt. For example, yes you are upset about the job interview. But you know what you need to work on and how to improve in the future. That’s adapting the negative experience. Finally, you should take problem solving action. I know this is easier said than done but if you find yourself with a problem where you need to show resilience then you should try and solve the problem. For instance, if you don’t do well at a job interview (the problem) then examine the interview to see what went wrong and work on those areas to improve. This is the solution. I hope you found today’s social psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast useful. If you want to learn more then please check out the links below. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY SECOND EDITION FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset Have a great day, Connor. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/202003/lessons-coronavirus-we-are-more-resilient-we-feel Developmental Psychology 2nd Edition by Connor Whiteley I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcasts goes into cognitive psychology and social psychology as the psychology podcast episode is on the Psychology of Cults. Firstly, I just wanted to give a massive thank you to Lawrence for his very kind comment on last week’s show. I love hearing from you all. It means a lot to me to know that you enjoy the show. The Self-Soothing Prejudice: This type of prejudice is when we discount a lot of people, mass or bulk discounting, so we can maintain peace of mind when we feel threatened. For example, if you’re attending a party and someone comes up to you. Making you feel threatened then quite naturally you might go: You might be the best footballer in the school but I’m the best worker at my firm. I don’t know. It’s just an example. However, you get the idea because you discount those people who make you feel threatened by pointing out you’re better at something else. Overall, this type of prejudice is perfectly natural as it helps us to sustain our peace of mind. Although, this self-soothing prejudice has a highly negative side when it reaches extreme levels. As a result, the self-soothing prejudice corrupts us and if you engage in Absolute self-soothing prejudice then this truly as well as absolutely corrupts you. This happens when we constantly bulk ourselves up with the self-soothing prejudice. You can easily compare it to using trump cards. Whenever you face a threat you use a trump card and instantly you have the winning answer to the threat. The Social Psychology of Self-Soothing Prejudice: This podcast episode now turns towards human relationships and by extension social psychology. Due to when we constantly as well as continually bulk ourselves up with self-soothing prejudice, it becomes toxic to our friends and other relationships. Also, they may call you names. Like: you’re a sociopath or psychopath. Leading you to, what guess, pulling out another trump card to show to yourself that you are far better than these name-callers. Overall, these trump cards come from Cults. The Psychology of Cults and The Self-Soothing Prejudice: Interestingly, Cults give out trumps cards to their members as part of their appeal and it has a lot of interesting effects of their members. Nonetheless, the members take these trump cards so they can be better than everyone else, and they are willing to be brainwashed. Although, the members come to the Cult because the Cult has discovered the ‘truth’ and everyone else believes in the lies. Yet the members fail to see that these trump cards are no different from other cults. Regardless of the Cult’s ‘truth’ Building upon this further, the trump cards allow the members to become absolute in their perfection and their mistakes aren’t mistakes as well as they become infallible. All to provide themselves with a fantasy break from the jealous anxiety of everyday life. Over time this becomes addictive and engaging with the self-soothing prejudice and the trump card becomes more natural than rational thoughtfulness. Overall, engaging in extremely high levels of self-soothing prejudice is very dangerous. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode on the social psychology and cognitive psychology of Cults. If you want to learn more then please check out the following links: FREE 8 Psychology Book Boxset Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition Have a great day everyone! Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/ambigamy/201807/why-people-become-narcissists-gaslighters-and-cult-members

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast will be on cognitive psychology as we look at the impact advancements in Artificial Intelligence and other technology could have on human behaviour as well as mental processes. Note: I highly recommend listening to the podcast episode on this topic as this blog post is only a summarised version to some extent. Artificial Intelligence News: Firstly, I did want to say that I was going to have an AI voice double for you but I couldn’t get the tech to work but I promise you that this technology is real. You can see it in action on www.deepzen.io or www.descript.com The first AI-generated textbook was published in April 2019. “Writing in the introduction, Springer Nature’s Henning Schoenenberger (a human) says books like this have the potential to start “a new era in scientific publishing” by automating drudgery.” [The Verge] [Forbes] “We’re moving inexorably toward a subscription-driven, human-driven, emotion-driven, ad-free, funnel-free, big brand loyalty-free world.” Mark W Schaefer, Marketing Rebellion A human’s greatest psychological need is to belong, and yet there is a belonging gap in the world – people are lonelier than ever.” – Mark W. Schaefer, Marketing Rebellion The Theory: In addition, I just wanted to say upfront that technology does have an impact on our cognition, and you can read Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition for more information. However, in short, we know that our experience of the world shapes our neuronal connections in our brain because of neuroplasticity. (Biological Psychology 2nd Edition) However, as more and more of humanity is becoming exposed to technology it’s reasonable to assume that our cognition could change because of our exposure to technology. Finally, I wanted to say that Artificial Intelligence will change the world because whilst AI is similar to the internet of the 1970s. If we think about how far the internet has come since that decade and how important the internet has become to our lives. Then it is only logical to presume a similar thing will happen to Artificial Intelligence. Let’s move onto my three predictions… 1) Our Cognition Will be Influenced It is ridiculous to say that our cognition will not be influenced by Artificial Intelligence because technology and our experience is constantly shaping our mental processes. Whether it be our memories, our schemas, thinking patterns and even our thinking biases. Furthermore, here are some studies that highlight the impact of technology on our behaviour. · Rosser et al (2007) found that surgeons who played first-person video games were faster and more accurate in surgery simulations. · Sanchez (2012) showed that playing first-person video games and other technology that requires spatial abilities could help students to understand abstract scientific concepts. · Rosen and Cheever (2013) showed that students who surrounded themselves with more technology while studying scored lower average grades than others. Overall, I hope that you can see that technology does have an impact on our behaviour and Artificial Intelligence will be no different. 2) Humanity and Social Interaction will be more important than ever As we have seen with the rise of the internet and by extension social media, people have reportedly felt lonelier than ever and as Artificial Intelligence spreads and creates Virtual Conferences, perhaps. Then we may feel the need to use this technology that could create the same experience instead of going out to see our friends or connect with people. Due to instead of typing in a comment on social media or Facebook group, in the future, we may be able to ‘go’ into the group and comment by talking to the person. Nevertheless, this will still create artificial relationships that aren’t real, and it will be most important than ever to connect with real people. Moreover, with Artificial Intelligence allowing us to create voice doubles, AI films, write books and more. People will NOT be able to tell the difference in the future. This means people might be less likely to trust big companies or inhuman brands. Making human branding more important than ever. This applies to the job market as well because if AI can write articles and content for companies, then why would a company ever want to employ you? Resulting, in you needing to double down on being human and what makes you unique against the AI. 3) Education will be More Accessible Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have already seen a massive increase in Online learning and personally I like it- and this is going to continue through the first term of my second year at university. In other words, online learning is the new norm but it is limited. There’s no sense of community. You can’t talk to your friends and it is very different from the lecture theatre at university. Also, it’s harder to ask questions. Also, textbooks and other needed course materials are very expensive. However, Artificial Intelligence and other advancements could change this. As Deepzen.io is creating AI narrated audiobooks and this could bring textbooks into audio formats. I would love this! In addition, Virtual Reality could create virtual lecture theatres so the experience would be identical to ‘normal’ learning with all the normal benefits instead of the problems associated with remote learning. Furthermore, as this is The Psychology World Podcast, this advancement in technology could make education more accessible to other people. As you aren’t constrained by physical capacity so you could have 1,000s of people all over the world logging on to attend this lecture. This is already happening in the author world as you go to webinars to learn about different topics and there are 1,000s of people attending each session from ALL other the world. Meaning as a result of technology, this knowledge can be accessed by everyone. So, I doubt this wouldn’t happen to formal education unless the Universities decide to seriously capitalise on this by charging extremely high prices. Who knows? I hope you've enjoyed today’s episode. Please check out the references for more information and have a great day! References: Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition Links in Article I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is The Effects of Reframing a Diagnosis so we’ll looking at clinical and abnormal psychology today. In the world, there is a lot of judgement as well as stigma. This is especially true in the case of mental health because unlike physical health, people don’t rally around you and they just abandon you. In addition, if people know you’re going to therapy then people will judge you and you will be subjected to stigma. This is a massive problem in psychotherapy and treatment in general because this is a barrier to treatment. As why go to treatment if you’re going to be subjected to so much stigma? As always, I encourage you to go to treatment if you want because it may end up changing your life for the better. Allowing you to possibly live a better and healthier life. Additionally, even if you or your clients made it to therapy (that alone is a massive achievement so a massive well done to you) they could still feel weak and disempowered. This is where changing or reframing the diagnosis comes in because it is the job of the therapist to reframe the client’s perception of their mental health diagnosis, so they fill empowered as well as strong. There are many ways how you can do this and I’m not going to tell you how to do it because everyone is different, and each mental condition requires a different approach potentially. However, I will say this and hopefully this will tell you everything you need to know: If you only focus on the negatives, then you will never see the positives of the diagnosis. For example, the diagnosis could allow you to get treatment, support, and many other benefits that you didn’t have before, and most of all you aren’t suffering in silence anymore. Overall, reframing your client’s perception of their diagnosis is critical to breaking the stigma, this goes for both self-stigma and societal stigma. Finally, by helping our clients change their perceptions, we can increase their self-efficacy as well as their self-esteem. Yet the most important benefit is that they can become be active in the recovery process. As well as they can be role models for other people to help them break stigma. I hope you’re enjoyed today’s abnormal psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast if you want to learn more then check out Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition and consider signing up for my mailing list. To get your FREE 8 book boxset. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Reference: Sickel, A. E., Seacat, J. D., & Nabors, N. A. (2019). Mental health stigma: Impact on mental health treatment attitudes and physical health. Journal of Health Psychology, 24, 586–599. http://dx.doi.org.holyfamily.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1359105316681430

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is about stress reduction by reading books. Therefore, this episode comes under the psychology subfields of social psychology, abnormal psychology and health psychology. Currently, there are a lot of stressors in the world from the COVID-19 pandemic to job losses, death of friends and family, political arguments and many, many more. Equally, there are a lot of well-known stress reducers that can help you to reduce your stress which is supported by social psychology research. For instance, going for a walk, listening to music and more. However, research done by the University of Sussex had shown an amazing result. They demonstrated that if you read a book that transports you into your character’s world for as little as 6 minutes. Then you should experience a 68% reduction in stress as well as lowered heart rate and muscle tension. Interestingly, the stress reducing power of reading outshone listening to music, taking a walk, having a cup of tea as well as other common ways to reduce psychological stress. Furthermore, therapists recommend reading to their clients as a result of these findings. Personally, as a sci-fi fantasy author, I’m very pleased with these findings because it means that my books can help people to destress and relax more, so if you wanted to check out any of my fiction then please click here. Furthermore, there are other benefits to reading in terms of psychological wellbeing. For instance: · Reading can enhance your Theory of Mind. This is seen as a skill to help you understand the emotions and intentions of others. You can read more about it in my book: Developmental Psychology 2nd Edition. · According to research published in Social Science & Medicine, book readers tend to live an average of two years longer than non-readers. · Finally, reading can help to build sexual tension. This is probably when they’re reading a romance or erotica book or when they’re reading a book involving Unresolved Sexual Tension between the two main characters. Overall, I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more about psychology then you might want to check out the following links: Health Psychology Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition (A Book on Social Psychology and Cultural Psychology) Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. References: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/5070874/Reading-can-help-reduce-stress.html 2. Letting Go: The Maryland Shores and Second Chances: The Maryland Shores; www.loriannoberlin.com/fiction 3. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/19/coronavirus-what-americans-are-buying-online-while-in-quarantine.html 4. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/19/coronavirus-what-americans-are-buying-online-while-in-quarantine.html 5. https://www.infodocket.com/2020/06/23/new-data-from-npd-u-s-adult-fiction-sales-rise-as-covid-19-lockdowns-subside/ 6. https://tinyurl.com/y6dhwub3 7. https://tinyurl.com/wqgbglk 8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953616303689 9. http://tribemedicine.com/tribemedicineblog/romance-novels 10. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523084443.htm 11. https://tinyurl.com/y4yratre

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on What to Say to a Depressed Person to Help them so this falls within the areas of social psychology, clinical and abnormal psychology. Depression is a fairly common mental condition along with anxiety so I thought that it would be useful to do a podcast episode on it. Overall, we’re going to be looking at 5 things to say to a depressed people to help them. I’m Here for You: This may seem rather easy as well as common sense, but it isn’t that often that our friends as and families know that we are truly there for them. I mean I know they we assume that they know we are here for them. Yet unless we actually tell them, they won’t know that we truly are here for them. Overall, this can help a depressed person feel less alone as well as it supports them some social support while they go through their difficulties. What Can I do to Help? To be honest, a lot of these suggestions about what to say to a depressed person can be considered common sense. However, it’s usually common-sense things that we don’t say or do. Despite how easy they are. Overall, even saying this to be a depressed person can be helpful as it shows they aren’t alone, you want to help them and you’re a great family member or friend. I Like X, Y and Z about You: This is a slightly more interesting tip because if you say for example: I like the way you dress, you’re funny and everyone like you. Then you are providing them with positive reinforcement as well as you are, very importantly, challenging their negative thoughts. And it’s only by challenging these negative thoughts and ultimately changing them will the depressed person ever to be to recover. Yes, that is bad: Of course, you would have to say it more naturally than that, but you get the idea. You need to acknowledge the depressed person’s difficulties, so they know that they aren’t being ignored and people don’t think that the person is just making it up. Or even worse believing that the depressed person is attention seeking. Ultimately, acknowledging their difficulties helps them to feel valued and more positive. There are Ways Through This: When you’re saying this point, you would generally be talking about the depressed person maybe getting professional help as well as perhaps going through psychotherapy. Again, being in therapy isn’t weakness or anything else that society can make you believe. Therapy is potentially going to help you live a better, happier life. Therefore, by saying to the depressed person about therapy, you are helping them take the first step to recovery and living a better life. I’ve been through it too: Of course, this isn’t applicable to everyone but if you’ve suffered from a mental condition that’s the same as the person you’re trying to help. Then tell them. Make them know that they aren’t alone. Make them ask to you questions about how you coped and dealt with the difficulties. Overall, I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about Depression then please check out my book Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-shrink/201507/6-things-you-can-say-support-someone-whos-depressed?

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on developmental psychology and social psychology. So we’ll be looking at language development. What Influences Language Development? Well, it turns out that a lot of different factors can and do influence a child’s language development, but let’s focus on a few key factors. Therefore, two key factors that can influence language development are the quantity of language input to the child as well as the quality of language input to the child. Quantity of Language Input: One of the best ways to help a child speak is to talk in front of them and to them, but this is problematic as adults may differ hugely when talking to a child. In terms of words per hour, sentences per hour and sentence length when talking to a child. Nonetheless, why is this quantity important for language development? It’s important because the variance in the quantity of language predicts a child’s vocabulary development and processing speed. (Marchman &Frenald, 2008; Hurtado, Marchman and Fernald, 2008) In other words, the higher the quantity of input to a child. The better vocabulary and processing speed they should have. Finally, this is true for teachers and children in the classroom as well. (Huttnlocho, Vasilyeva, Cynerman and Levine, 2002) Quality of language input: Although, there must be high quality in language input as well as a high quantity of language input. One of the main reasons why quality is important is because the lack of quality in language input can explain the variance in a child’s poor language development that is usually attributed to a child’s poor socioeconomic status. Nonetheless, another main and extremely important reason why quality is important is that the role of interaction with a child must be interpersonal. I mean if you merely put a child in front of a TV; a possibly higher quantity of language input; then the child will still struggle with language development. As Roseberry, H Hirsh-Pasek, Parish-Morris and Golinkoff (2009) found that only if someone is live sitting beside a child describing the TV can a child learn from a TV. Cognitive Brain Systems Involved in Language Development: As a quick final section on language development, I wanted to quickly mention that a lot of different brain systems are involved in language. For instance, · Auditory and visual system as you need to match what you hear to what you see · Memory system as you need to remember what you’ve learned and seen · Attention system- pay attention to what people are saying · Processing system- link words to meaning · Inferencing system- interpret the message Parting Note: We cannot forget that human communication is a two-way street so it partially relies on the child’s socio-cognitive skills as well. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s psychology podcast episode on development and social psychology. If you want to learn more about developmental psychology, then please check out my new Development Psychology book Second Edition. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’ll going to be looking at 5 powerful ways to overcome social anxiety, so we’re looking for something under the umbrella of abnormal psychology So, social anxiety is a fairly common condition as I talk about more in book and if you want to learn more about anxiety as well as different conditions. Then please check out Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition. 5 Ways to Overcome Your Social Anxiety: 1. Challenge Your Negative Thoughts: I did a podcast episode on how to overcome your negative thoughts a few weeks ago so please go to the podcast tab to find that useful episode. Yet you need to challenge your negative thoughts because quite often anxiety sufferers feel disempowered and helpless. But if you challenge your thinking and possibly realise that you have nothing to be fearful of. Then you might be able to change your thinking and you might start to feel less anxious. 2. Go to a Coffee Shop: When I first read this idea, I was extremely surprised, because how would going to a place that makes you anxious help? Well, it turns out if you go to a coffee shop and do something that you enjoy. Such as: watching a film or playing a game. Then this can help you to get use to the situation and ‘climatize’ you to the amount of people around. Overall, this helps you to get use to the amount of people around so you potentially feel less anxious in a given situation. 3. Adopt a Healthier Lifestyle This shouldn’t really surprise too many, but how does a healthier lifestyle does social anxiety sufferers? Interestingly, the mind as well as the body are linked; and I discuss this more in my book Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition. Therefore, if you make small lifestyle changes, this improves your self-confidence. Reducing your anxiety as well as having other benefits. Here are some healthier options or small changes you could make in order to overcome your social anxiety: · Avoid or limit your caffeine intake. · Avoid energy drinks as these drinks act as stimulants and this increases anxious symptoms. · Make exercise a priority in your day as this has many psychological benefits as different hormones and neurotransmitters get released. This is before you consider the long-term benefits! 4. Find social situations and engage Another powerful way to help overcome social anxiety is to actively try and find supportive social situations so you can try and overcome your fears. For example, you could try to find a social anxiety support group and engage with them. this would have the additional benefit of you learning from other people to see how they manage their anxiety. 5. Be Kind to Yourself Finally, you need to be kind to yourself. Nobody is perfect and everyone takes time to learn things. So just be kind to yourself, take things at your own pace and you will be fine. I hope that you found this psychology podcast episode useful today, and if you want to learn more about anxiety and other mental conditions then please check out my book: Abnormal psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor! I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/calmer-you/202007/12-powerful-ways-help-overcome-social-anxiety?

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’ll going to be discussing why people are happier with their lives if they are more authentic. So, I hope that you enjoy this social psychology episode of the podcast. Back in 2014, psychology researchers at Louisiana Tech University published a very important study using data collected from college students about their level of authenticity as well as their life satisfaction. Overall, their results demonstrated that the more authentically people lived their lives, the happier they were with their life. Additionally, as a human branding and social psychology person this is perfect for you as this builds into the idea of human branding where you need to connect with people and get them to know, like and trust you. Interestingly, the study found that there were three reasons for these research findings. Reason Number One: Firstly, the more authentic you are, the more likely you are to live your own life as well as follow your own path in live. Due to the fact that you will most probably do what feels most natural to you so you will develop your interests as well as develop your curiosity for that interest. Overall, making you more likely to become high skilled and an expert in that chosen skill. Personally, as I’m really interested in human branding and I live authentically. I actively develop and learn about social psychology and things related to human branding so I can become better and more skilled at human branding. Reason Number Two: Secondly, the more authentic you are, the more you should be able to resistant outside pressure from people around you who want you to be a different version of yourself or at least do another job. Yet being authentic results in you being free to be yourself and follow what you want to do. The Final Reason: Finally, and my personal favourite as a massive human branding fan; is being authentic allows you to have more meaningful relationships with people. As well as authenticity makes you less willing to spend your valuable time with people who don’t care about you. Personally, I completely agree with this final reason because being authentic is all about being true to yourself so you shouldn’t have to deal with people who don’t like nor care about yourself. Conclusion: In conclusion, people who are more authentic tend to be happier in their lives because they tend to follow their own paths in life, they can resistant outside pressure and be themselves as well as they tend to have more deeper and meaningful relationships with people. Overall, I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s social psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about social psychology then please check out my book: Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. References: Boyraz, G., Waits. J.B. and Felix, V.A. (2014), ‘Authenticity, life satisfaction and distress: A longitudinal analysis’, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61, 498–505. Joseph, S. (2016). Authentic. How to be yourself and why it matters. Piatkus. London.

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast focuses on social psychology and cognitive psychology as we investigate how psychology has influenced policymakers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this blog post and psychology podcast episode is written using my notes from the British Psychological Society’s Conference on the 30th June to the 1st July 2020. Great Psychology Quotes: Firstly, I wanted to mention two great psychology quotes that I heard during the conference. “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” And this quote is brilliant because it truly highlights the severity of the pandemic. After all, even if one or two people are infected then the virus can easily spread and infect hundreds if not thousands of people all other again. Therefore, it is vital that as a society we thrive to make sure that everyone is safe from the virus as well as, as a species we need to make sure that every person, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, country of origin is safe from the COVID-19 virus. “If there’s no vaccine or cure then disease control has to be behavioural,” This is critical because it is only through modifying people’s behaviour will be able to control and live with the virus. For example, we will need people to wash their hands more regularly, socially distance and perform other behaviours. The only way to get people to do this for the long term is to modify their behaviour. And this is where psychology comes in. How can Psychology Help Policy Makers during the Pandemic? During this particular talk at the psychology conference, there were 9 suggestions that the British Psychological Society put forward to the UK government about their policies and how to influence behaviour during the pandemic. However, we’re only going to be focusing on 8 suggestions. Minimise the I, emphasise the We: With western societies being individualistic cultures that focus on the needs of the individual compared to the group is it somewhat nature for people to do things for the need and betterment of the group and sacrifice things to themselves. As let’s face it social distancing is very detrimental to the individual and not going to work. Nonetheless, during a pandemic, we need to think like a collectivistic culture and focus on the needs of the group to keep everyone safe and to prevent the spread of the virus. This is why the idea of We is very important as this gets people to realise that they are protecting everyone else by sacrificing things that would be benefiting them. Overall, to keep people safe we need to focus on the needs of society and not ourselves. Note this links into cultural dimensions as discussed in Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition. Message from Creditable Sources: In social psychology and persuasion, it is a well-known fact that the message needs to come from a creditable source, so people are more likely to listen and be influenced by it. Therefore, to influence people’s behaviour and get them to follow government guidelines and stop the spread of COVID-19 then the messages need to be delivered from a creditable source. This is why when the Scottish Chief Medical Advisor became uncreditable the Scottish government needed to change all their adverts to get rid of this now uncreditable source. By doing this it allowed the Scottish Government to maintain their creditability and people stayed persuaded by the messages. On the other hand, when the UK government didn’t sack Dominic Cummings a lot of the UK population lot faith in the government so their creditability was lost and I hate to say it but a lot of British people in my experience are no longer persuaded by the government’s messaging. You can learn more about Persuasion in Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition. Create Worry, Not Fear: Now, this is a difficult one as during a pandemic you need people to be concerned and act accordingly by changing their behaviour to help fight against the virus. However, persuasion psychology teaches us that you need to be careful as if you create too little or worry then no one will care. Equally, if you create too much fear then people will enter denial behaviour and they won’t follow the guidelines, or they will not be influenced by the messaging. This is why it’s critical that the government uses enough information and data to create worry but not so much that people are too frightened as well as fearful. Clearly Specify Behaviours, their Effectiveness and Be Evidence Base: I decided to merge these topics into one section because people need to be able to understand what they need to do, why they should do them as well as what’s the evidence for their so-called effectiveness. For example, to combat the community spread of the virus, people need to be clearly told what social distancing is, why social distancing is effective and what evidence is there for its effectiveness. As it’s all well and good a government telling people to socially distancing, but why? Why socially distance when it’s so detrimental to the self? Hence, why it’s important to stress the effectiveness of social distancing as well as this feeds back into the idea of emphasising the We and not the I. Furthermore, a government’s policies need to be evidence-led; and I’m not mentioning that the BPS thankfully confirmed that the UK government isn’t following the science; (the BPS works with the government directly so they know what’s happening) because leaders need to use the evidence and science to make informed decisions about how to combat the virus. Nonetheless, the concept of being evidence-based applies to creditability as well as you need to use evidence to see how people will behave. For example, I regretfully know that a lot of people think that psychology and how people will behave is common sense yet those of us in psychology know that behaviour is far from common sense, due to a number of factors including cognitive biases. Therefore, leaders need to use data, evidence, and expert advice to shape policy so that they follow the science and not political aspirations and motivations. Avoid Unintended Consequences: This is another critical suggestion by the BPS to the UK Government because leaders need to be careful about their policies; even more so during a pandemic as they need to avoid unintended consequences. For example, now the UK is starting to open up again a lot of people are feeling anxious and concerned as well as other experts believe that the government’s policy could lead to an increase in social deprivation. Consequently, leaders need to design their policies so that their aims are achieved without creating other problems that need to be solved further down the line. Pledge to Work Together: Finally, leaders need to show people that they are working with them to solve this pandemic and fight back because people are more likely to want to work with the government and follow guidelines if they feel valued as well as listened to. Overall, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this social psychology, cognitive psychology and political psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast. If you want to learn more about persuasion and influence which is heavily featured in today’s article then please check out my Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition Book. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

In today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’re going to be talking about how to read people, so this involves social interactions (social psychology) and mental processes (cognitive psychology) So please join me for another episode of The Psychology World Podcast… As humans, we can get a lot of information through non-verbal communication. As a result, by merely looking at someone’s face we can tell a lot about them including their traits. For example, we can tell if the person we’re looking at is dominant, kind, honesty, angry and more. However, the way how we tell these traits is very interesting because we decode these facial expressions very quickly (according to Over and Cook we make recognise these impressions in about 100 milliseconds) but different emotional traits require different decoding strategies. For example, Over and Cook discovered that when people were looking at sad expressions as well as angry expressions, from these expressions other emotions would be inferred. Such as: dominance and other less desirable traits. They tend to focus on the eyes more. Whereas, people who were looking at happy expressions tend to focus on the mouth more as it can be easier to tell happiness from the mouth to the eyes. Why is this Important? It’s important to look at facial expressions as these give us impressions about people and these impressions impact our behaviour in almost every way. From sentencing decisions to employable decisions to who we think we should be friends with. In addition, impressions from facial expressions start at a very early age because Over and Cook found that children as young as three years old could tell if a person was ‘strong’ or ‘nice’ by looking at their face. Subsequently, a 7 month old baby prefers a trustworthy face compared to an untrustworthy face person. You have to love developmental psychology. Importance of Looking: As a final note, I have to stress here that it is very important to have face to face conservations so you truly understand and appreciate facial expressions as they are very helpful and they can help you to navigate the social world. So please try and make an effort to see people and not hide behind a computer or phone screen all the time. Overall, I hope that you’re enjoyed this psychology blog post today and if you want to learn about cognitive and social psychology then please consider checking out my books: Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition and Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. References: Harriet Overa and Richard Cook, “Where do spontaneous first impressions of faces come from?” Cognition 170 (2018): 190-200. Overa and Cook propose a framework entitled “Trait Inference Mapping,” explaining trait inferences as products of mappings between “face space” and “trait space.” Hedwig Eisenbarth and Georg W. Alpers, “Happy Mouth and Sad Eyes: Scanning Emotional Facial Expressions.” Emotion 11, no. 4, (2011): 860–865.

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast focuses on social psychology and the misconceptions around people’s sexual interest in them, and if you’ve read any of my other blog posts or books then you know that I like Sociocultural Psychology and the Psychology of Human Relationships. Personally, I think that this is a very interesting topic to discuss because humans always think that people are less or more interest in us sexually then they actually are and typically men tend to overestimate sexually attraction and women tend to underestimate how much men on into them. Note: for the purposes of this article we are talking about heterosexual people. Moving onto the topic itself, a new study published in the Journal Psychological Science in January 2020 has revealed some very interesting things about these misconceptions, because the study (Lee et al, 2020) has found that these gender differences in misconceptions is down to two factors. Firstly, men tend to overestimate sexual attraction because of their own sexual attraction. For example, if they believe that a woman is into them a lot then they to be into that women a lot. Researchers have described this as the man projecting their own sexual interest onto the women. Secondly, this misconception is because of sociosexual orientation as well as men tend to have more unrestricted sociosexual orientation, meaning that they are more open to causal and uncommitted sex with a higher perception of attraction. Whereas women tend to have more restricted sociosexual orientation, so they are less open to uncommitted and causal sex. Overall, it is combination of these two factors that explain the differences in the misconceptions of sexual attraction between the gender as well as these biases are largely down to the sexual strategies of each gender. For instance, men tend to reproduce with many partners (evolutionary speaking) and women tend to focus on one mate who can provide resources. All to ensure the survival of the species. I hope that you’ve today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about social psychology as well as relationships then please check out my book: Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition and Psychology of Human Relationships. I truly hope that you’re enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Reference: Lee, A. J., Sidari, M. J., Murphy, S. C., Sherlock, J. M., & Zietsch, B. P. (2020). Sex differences in misperceptions of sexual interest can be explained by sociosexual orientation and men projecting their own interest onto women. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619900315