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

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on the developmental impacts of COVID-19 on children so we’ll be looking at social psychology and cognitive psychology as we will mainly be focusing on social skills and brain development. So right now as the world seems to be returning to some sense of normal; at least in the UK; it is a great time to consider the effects of COVID-19 on the social skills and brain development of children as this is has been a massive concern of parents. As a result of the decreased social activities as well as the dramatic decrease to schooling and potentially learning. However, I would like to assure parents that the brain development of their child and by extension their cognitive development; at least most of it; can still be on a healthy course to ‘normal’ development as long as the caregiver is attentive, loving, interactive and… basically is there and engaged with the child. Furthermore, thankfully a child’s social skills shouldn’t be impacted too much by the pandemic as long as the caregiver is stays engaged with their child, keeps stress manageable (we’ll talk about this in a moment) and provides opportunities for age related moments. Going back to the last point, some parents are creating very childish conversations with their children by literally narrating their entire day to their child as a way to interact and engage with them. For example: “I am putting the washing in the machine. This is the machine, and these are my jeans and your baby socks,” Overall, a baby needs an attentive and caring caregiver that loves them, interacts with them and is engaged in them. Nonetheless, I think that we all know how stressful COVID-19 has been on us so this can add a lot of stress into a parent’s life and whilst babies as well as children can learn from positive stress. They can be very badly affected by negative stress. Especially, as babies and toddlers when their brains are especially influenced by input. Thus, it’s important to try and relax and try not to get stressed about it all. Mindfulness and mediation is meant to be very useful so maybe this is something to try in the future. I hope you have enjoyed this social psychology and cognitive psychology post. If you want to learn more then please check out my books and if you want to learn more about Development Psychology then please check out my book: Developmental Psychology. Have a great day, Connor. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/babies/202005/will-social-distancing-affect-my-toddler-s-development 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 on cuteness, the psychology of cuteness and why you need more cuteness in your life. Therefore, today’s episode looks at social psychology as well as cognitive psychology. So, cuteness is very important in today’s society because it dominates everything. It started in Japan with those cute bears with massive eyes then it spread to east Asia and now the concept of cuteness has spread all over the world. In addition, cuteness dominates as well as permeates all aspects of our daily lives from cute fashion to cute food to cite houses. We cannot escape cuteness. The main reason for this cuteness obsession is because it sells. If you’re product is cute then it is a lot more likely to sell compared to an ugly product. A more popular and industry used word is called: cuteness engineering. As a result, companies need and actively try to make their products as cute as possible for customers to enjoy as well as find attractive. However, I heard you ask where does psychology come in as this is a psychology blog and a psychology podcast? Well, social psychology and cognitive psychology; as we’re dealing with thinking processes; comes in a lot when it comes to cuteness due to Lorenz; a famous researcher who worked with Bowlby on attachment (you can see Developmental Psychology for more information) theorised that cuteness was an adaptive process that can melt the toughest of hearts as well as it can turn people into devote carers or caregivers. Personally, this is quite an interesting idea because it explains why people like to look after cute children and others. Furthermore, this is backed up with cognitive and social psychological research due to Sherman, Haidt and Coan (2009) ran an interesting study where they got people to look at cute animal photos and play a game of operation afterwards. Their results showed that people who looked at the cute animals before playing the game were more careful and accurate when playing the game. Overall, this seems to agree with Lorenz’s idea. How can cuteness benefit your life? Well, cuteness and the psychology of cuteness can impact your life in a number of ways. For instance, if you look at cute pictures before you’re going to do tasks that require you to be careful, concentrate and accurate. These images can help you to do those things better. Finally, if you are met with an annoying person in front of you then you can simply imagine them as a cuter version of themselves or imagine them as a cute child. In turn, this activates the caring and empathy systems instead of the defensiveness system. Overall, I hope that you have enjoyed today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about social psychology or cognitive psychology then please check out my books and sign up to my newsletter. Have a great day, Connor. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/surprise/202001/why-you-need-more-cuteness-in-life Kringelbach, Stark, Alexander, Bornstein, & Stein, 2016: On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond Sherman, Haidt, & James Coan, 2009: Viewing Cute Images Increases Behavioral Carefulness Nittono, et. al., 2012: The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus 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 is on How Does Racism Affect Health? So this episodes delves into social psychology as we deal with discrimination and prejudice and psychology addresses these topics well. However, we will be dipping into biological psychology as well because we address biology and physiological responses that people have to certain stimuli. I’m doing this topic as the episode of The Psychology World Podcast today because I want to show that racism DOES have a real physical impact upon the people who face it. In addition, to the profound amount of other effects that racism has on people and their lives. Firstly, and this is the main way how racism impacts a person’s health, is racism triggers the stress response in a person because they are in a potentially harmful situation. Therefore, there bodily acts accordingly by increasing heart rate, breathing as well as blood pressure. The body does this to get more oxygen around the body and to the muscles so the body can react if it needs to. In the short term, this is a good thing because it means that the victim of racism can fight or run away if needed. However, if this is frequently activated so the if the body is constantly increasing its heart rate and breath as well as blood pressure then this can lead to many health problems. Such as: depression, anxiety, insomnia and other problems. Additionally, a massive problem with racism as well as prejudice is that if a person is regularly exposed to it then it leads to their self-esteem and self-worth to be eroded. Leading to other problems such as: lack of self-esteem, depression, anxiety and in extreme cases, but this probably happens a lot more than we think, self-harm and suicide. Consequently, I hope that in this episode of The Psychology World Podcast I have shown you that racism has a very real and awful impact on people. Therefore, if we ever encounter racism and have racist thoughts then please challenge it as these thoughts are not needed and it is only if we work together can we survive and make our societies a better place for ourselves, our children and for the future generations. Overall, I hope that you have liked this social psychology blog post and if you want to learn more about racism, prejudice and other topics in social psychology then please check out Sociocultural Psychology 2nd Edition and if you want to learn more other depression and anxiety then please check Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/202006/how-does-racism-affect-health

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on anxiety disorders and the different types. Today’s show notes are taken from my Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition book: After looking at depression, I thought that it would be good to look at some other psychological conditions that people can develop. Personally, I loved this lecture at university because I love learning but it gave me the chance to learn about other types of mental conditions as well. What are anxiety disorders? This is a group of disorders that are distinguished by feelings of wrong and intense stress as well as when the sufferer makes attempts to deal with these feelings. Their methods are disruptive and largely unsuccessful. Unfortunately, anxiety disorders are moderately common as the lifetime prevalence; how common the condition is in a population; of this condition is 29% (Kessler et al, 2005) and it’s more common in women than men. (Bresula, Chilcoal, Kessler and Davis, 1999) In addition, the term anxiety disorders can be broken down into a lot of different sub-categories. Phobias: Phobias are a great subcategory to start off with as they’re well-known and television programmes love to use them. But what actually are phobias? A phobia is a very intense and irrational fear that is usually paired with great determination as well as effort to avoid to the object. Such as: if you have a phobia of spiders then you would not only have an intense fear of spiders, but you would do everything in your power to avoid them as well. Additionally, specific phobias are any disorder that is characterised by an extreme as well as irrational fear of a certain object or situation. Like: flying, spiders or snakes. Overall, the prevalence of any specific phobia is 13% (Kessler et al, 2005) and women are twice as likely to have a specific phobia than men. (Bourdon et al, 1988) Social Phobia/ Social Anxiety Disorder: I once knew a girl who suffered from Social Anxiety Disorder and it was interesting from a psychological perspective; at least; to talk to her about social situations because she hated them. She hated being watched, judged and anything to do with being social. Yet she was very social with certain people who she knew wouldn’t judge her. Moving onto the content, people with social phobias are very fearful about being watched or judged by others. Interestingly, it is not only negative perception or evaluation that is fearful but positive evaluation as well. (Weeks, Heinberg, Rodebaugh and Norton, 2008) That fact makes this disorder very interesting because it’s natural to assume that the person would be concerned about negative evaluations. Like: “She looks awful,” “What is he doing? What an idiot?” “The gym obviously isn’t working for them!” Yet it makes almost no sense for them to be concerned about positive evaluations. Such as: “He’s great to talk to,” “That’s an amazing piece of work!” “I love your cake, Sarah!” Nonetheless, one of the possible reasons for why sufferers of this condition might hate positive evaluations is because it sets a standard and then they become fearful of them missing the standard in the future. Leading to people judging them because they failed this time. Putting that into practice using the cake example, Sarah could make a great cake this time but as her friends think she’s an amazing cook now. She could become anxious over the thought of failing to bake another amazing cake, and her friends judging her for her failure. Furthermore, men and women are affected equally by this disorder as well as it typically manifests itself in childhood or adolescences. (Robins and Regier, 1991) This is a very interesting fact and it probably explains the behaviour of the girl that I knew. Interestingly, sometimes a social phobia is limited to only one situation; like: speaking in groups; whilst in other cases, social phobias are widespread or generalised to many or all social situation. Going back to the girl I knew, she hated meeting strangers and talking to them, but she was fine being the centre of attention for people that she knew. Another downside of Social Anxiety Disorder: In addition, to the suffering, the panic and the awful feelings associated with this condition. When forced into situations, people that suffer from social phobia may use drugs or alcohol to ‘fortify’ themselves. This increases the risk of alcohol and substance abuse or dependency. (Pollack, 2001) Which leads to many more problems for the individual. Panic disorders: This is another type of disorder that I’ve accounted in my life as I’ve had one or two friends that suffer from panic attacks as well as panic disorders. Especially, in social situations. What are Panic Disorders? This is a type of anxiety disorder that can be characterised by repeated or debilitating panic attacks. Panic attacks are a sudden episode of horrific bodily symptoms. Like: choking, chest pains and distress. All anxiety disorders involve panic attacks, yet a panic disorder involves panic attacks that come out the blue. For example, the girl I knew that suffered from Social Anxiety Disorder had panic attacks in social situations and only those situations. Nevertheless, a sufferer of a panic disorder would suffer from a panic attack in any situation. Finally, panic disorders are found in 5% women and 2% men. (Barlow, 2002) Generalised Anxiety Disorder: Whilst, people with phobias and panic attacks suffer massively and their lives can be very disturbed. Both of these conditions are limited as without the stimulus or trigger these people can function almost ‘normally’ This doesn’t apply to people with Generalised Anxiety Disorder because these people aren’t anxious about a particular thing. Instead, their anxiety is continuous and severe. This disorder is relatively common as it has a prevalence of 6% (Kessler et al 2005) as well as it’s twice as likely to be found in women than men. An example of Generalised Anxiety Disorder is: “I’m so nervous about making a mistake at work I take all my reports home to rewrite them the night before I’m suppose to hand them in” (White, 1999, p.72) People with generalised anxiety disorder worry about everything and anything as well as these people feel inadequate, can’t concentrate, are oversensitive and may sometimes suffer from insomnia. According to Rickels and Ryan (2001), these behaviours can be accompanied by irregular breathing, chronic diaherria, rapid heart rate and excessive sweating. Personally, I feel so sorry for these people as Generalized Anxiety Disorder can be very debilitating and stop you from enjoying life. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about Abnormal Psychology then please check out my Abnormal Psychology 2nd Edition book here. Have a great day, Connor.

Today’s episode is on myths about apologies so this psychology blog post falls in social psychology. Therefore, in today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast, we’ll talk about 5 myths about apologies and what the truth is about them. Weakness: Firstly, apologising isn’t weakness. I know that lots of people thinking that by apologising you are admitting that you were at fault and this makes you a weakling. However, this isn’t some as in a lot of cases by apologising you are showing that you have strength, as well as saying that an apology makes you weak is just an excuse! Only have to say I’m sorry: Personally, I would love this to true because that would make the social world so much easier but as social psychology shows us the social world is rarely so simple. Therefore, you need to say sorry in an apology, but you need to do more as well. Like: talk about your problems and try and fix things as well. I’ll go into more depth in a moment but it’s important to think about. Responsibility: Whilst, this next point more aimed at organisations, business and in other words, not individuals. Sometimes people do not apologise to people when they should because they are afraid of admitting their mistake and taking responsibility. As this responsibility could lead to them getting sued. Personally, I completely see the logic in this thinking but as a Human Branding Consultant, I equally do not see the logic in it. Furthermore, in the USA a medical organisation found that when they apologised to people. It actually decreased the likelihood of them getting sued. Of course, this is only one example and shouldn’t be taken as a rule, but it’s something to consider. The purpose is forgiveness: I will fully forgive; see what I did there; someone who thought or believed that the purpose of an apology is forgiveness as I believed this until I researched it. However, the true purpose of an apology is conversation due to an apology provides you with an opportunity to sit down and talk about what’s happened. In order for you to fix your problems and move on so, this doesn’t happen again. Guilt is pointless: Looking at our final myth and this is one that I had never considered before I researched this topic, is the myth that guilt is pointless. We experience this because we feel guilt when we apologise, and society tells us that guilt is pointless. Although, there is such thing called ‘Good Guilt’ because sometimes guilt makes us do something productive that benefits ourselves, others and our relationships that leads to other long-term benefits. For example, good guilt could lead us to repair or try to fix our mistake that leads us to this ugly situation we are in now. Like: when we hurt a friend by telling a secret you may try and tell them a ‘dark’ secret of yours. Therefore, this guilt caused us to do something that benefits us now and in the long term, as now our friend knows that we care about them. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s social psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast. If you want to learn about more psychology, then please sign up for my newsletter to receive your FREE book. Have a great day, Connor Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/make-it-right/202005/the-top-15-myths-about-apologies

Today’s episode of The Psychology World Podcast is on Sleep and How Sleep Works and as today’s psychology podcast episode is on Biological Psychology, the show notes are taken from my book Biological Psychology 2nd Edition: I thought that I would end this book looking at sleep because we all need sleep but: How does it work? Why do we need sleep? Why do we dream? These are all interesting as well as important questions that we need to answer to be able to understand the whole point of sleep. Because let’s face it, sleep can be inconvenient as sometimes I would rather be doing something than sleeping. However, as you will find out throughout this next section sleep is vital so it shouldn’t be taken lightly. What is sleep? Personally, I always find these sorts of questions to be great because ‘what is sleep?’ is one of those annoying questions as we know what sleep is but it’s almost impossible to put into words. Nonetheless, three definitions include: · “Sleep is a readily reversible state of reduced responsiveness to, and interaction with, the environment.” · “Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterised by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles.” · Sleep represents an altered state of consciousness (Mutz, Javadi, 2017) Although, regardless of how you define sleep it must be noted that sleep is a universal behaviour that is displayed by higher vertebrates (all mammals and birds), and some cold-blooded vertebrates. The Circadian rhythm: As I read these slides and passages for my university lecture I was immediately interested in the whole sleep concept but then this strange word kept popping up. This word or phrase was the ‘Circadian Rhythm’ Which come on is a nice word to say. So, before we continue, we need to define it. A circadian rhythm can be defined in simple terms as a circular rhythm that the body goes through. In terms of sleep, the circadian rhythm is our melatonin; more on than later; drops during the day as we wake up and remains low during the day and increase as we get closer to bedtime and remains high during the night. Before it comes full circle and drops back down to lower levels in the morning. Circadian rhythms for the entire body: Many bodily functions follow a circadian rhythm and these are the product of endogenous influences; influences that originate from inside the body; and exogenous influences; influences from outside the body. Some examples of exogenous influences include: · Light · Temperature · Environment The purpose of endogenous rhythms is to keep the working of our internal body in sync with the outside world. This is important as the human circadian clock generates a rhythm that is longer than 24 hours when it has no external cues to refer to. As supported by Kelley et al (1999) who studied naval officers on 18-hour shifts. Exogenous or external cues: These cues rely on a stimulus to reset the circadian rhythm. This is called a Zeitgeber. (time trigger) Although, out of all the stimulus that the human body encounters light is crucial for resetting the rhythm. Overall, the human body runs on a biological clock that needs to reset itself and we need stimulus in order to do that. Mechanisms of the biological clock: There are 3 mechanisms involved in the biological clock and these include: · Melatonin · Genes that produce certain proteins · The Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) The SCN is part of the hypothalamus and it’s the main centre of the circadian rhythm for sleep and temperature. If the SCN is damaged then this results in less consistent body rhythms that aren’t synchronised to the environmental patterns of light as well as dark. In addition, cells in the SCN fire their action potentials in a very specific rhythm that are generated by the SCN are genetically controlled. Additionally, light resets the SCN via a small branch of the optic nerve called: the retinahypothalamus path. That travels directly from the retina to the SCN. The way how the SCN affects sleep is because the SCN controls activity in other areas of the brain. Like the pineal gland. The pineal gland is important as it secretes melatonin; a hormone that regulates the circadian and circannual rhythms as well as it increases 2-4 hours before bedtime. The genetic basis of circadian rhythms: There are two genes that are involved in circadian rhythms and thy are: · Timeless- this gene produces proteins called TIM. · Period- this gene produces proteins called PER. When TIM and PER are in high concentration, they interact with a protein (clock) to induce sleepiness. However, if the clock gene is damaged then this can result in a reduced sleep as well as erratic sleeping pattern. Furthermore, mutations in the PER gene can result in strange circadian rhythms. So now that we’ve looked at the basics of sleep and the circadian rhythm, what happens to us when it gets disrupted? I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to learn more about Biological Psychology, Sleep and more then please check out my book Biological Psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor.

Today’s psychology episode dips into cognitive psychology as we are dealing with negative thoughts but social psychology as well because some of these ways to deal with negative thoughts are to do with social factors. All in all, today’s episode of The Psychology World podcast is on How to Deal with Negative Thoughts because let’s face it we all have negative thoughts sometimes but sometimes these negative thoughts can become problematic. Leading to depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Therefore, I guess that this psychology podcast episode looks at clinical and abnormal psychology as well. Here are five ways to deal with negative thoughts. Challenge Your Thoughts: A lot of our thoughts and especially our negative thoughts are wrong because of various biases that you can read about in Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition and it’s because of these why we need to challenge our thoughts. To see if we are correct and there is a problem or to see if we are incorrect. For example, if I think I’m a bad psychology student then I need to think and question this assumption and by looking at my grades I’m not a bad student but I’m only okay when it comes to essays. Thus, the takeaway point is to question your thoughts to see if you’re right and only if you’re right should you be concerned about this thought. Focuses on Strengths: Thankfully, we all have our strengths and; not so thankfully; we all have our weaknesses and it is our strengths that we must focus on. For instance, if my negative thought is that I am a bad dancer; I am; then I can focus on my strengths of being a good writer, publisher, marketer and student. In other words, focus on your strengths because I bet you- you are great at a lot of things that other people are not. Practice Gratitude: This is especially important if you’re criticising yourself because you have failed to do a number of things that you needed to do today and if you are punishing yourself. But the important thing to remember is that to deal with these negative thoughts you need to be grateful to yourself instead of punishing yourself. Such as: today I wanted to write 4 chapters of my Clinical Psychology book, do some audiobook recording and some other things. However, I didn’t do a few of these things so the negative thought of why didn’t you do this when you need to came to mind. But I practiced gratitude and at least I did some of these things. Plus, I had other things going on today. In other words, cut yourself some lack and thank yourself when you accomplish something. Release Judgement and Find a Positive: To put it simply, try not to judge people and try to find a positive in the mess because if you try and find a positive then this will help your mental processes be positive. Plus, I’m not saying don’t acknowledge and try to sort out the negatives in a problem but do them in a positive manner and don’t judge people for their mistakes as this only leads to negative thoughts. Note: I know that this is a lot easier said than done! Seek Out Professional Support: I know that the week that this post was written in is Mental Health Awareness week 2020 and I must stress that it’s important if your negative thoughts continue and you’re struggling with life then please seek out professional support for help. And no it does NOT make you weak for seeking out help. I fully believe that it means you are a strong person as it takes a lot of courage to seek out professional help. I hope that you have found this podcast episode on cognitive psychology useful. If you want to learn more about psychology, then please consider signing up to my newsletter to receive psychology news and your FREE book. Have a great day, Connor. Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-s-mental-health-matters/201509/7-ways-deal-negative-thoughts

Today's episode is on Why Do We Have Large Brain as an intrduction to social cognition and this is a subtopic of cognitive psychology. Today's show notes are taken from Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition: Humanity’s ability to think, interact, form communities and do other things as a group is rather remarkable compared to other animals. As it is this ability of humanity’s that has allowed it to accomplish so much. But how are we able to do this group work and working together? Well, this is where our next topic comes in as social cognition looks at the mental processes behind our social interactions and group processes. Although, it must be stated upfront that primates have unusually large brains for our body size, and this comes with the price of very high energy costs. Meaning that to compensate for this high energy costs, there must be a good explanation for why we have this large organ that costs us so much energy. Evolutionary: Our social cognition can be explained by evolutionary theory because our large brains aided our survival as they allowed us to develop social skills. That allowed us to form groups and communities that was beneficial for the survival of the species. As this allowed us to hunt in packs, share the workload and aid in the survival of the species in other ways, Ecological hypothesis: This hypothesis looks at the reason for our big brains from an environmental standpoint and the hypothesis proposes that our big brains are a bi-product of cognitive demands of certain behaviours. Like: foraging mental maps of the landscape (for example), innovation and tool use. As a result, these instrumental skills gave us a direct advantage over living as individuals for survival. Therefore, we developed better foraging skills amongst other skills as we could forage in groups and learn from others. Social learning: Personally, I have always loved social learning theory as it’s always useful and interesting to consider. Therefore, applying social learning theory to Social Cognition, our large brains reflect the social skills that developed through social competition, and in order to achieve success socially, we needed to develop skills. Such as deception, forming alliances and manipulation. Meaning that social skills gave a direct advantage to the individual to survive. Thus, having and being able to use social skills is beneficial to the individual and not only the species. I hope you've enjoyed today cognitive psychology episode of The Psychology World Podcast and if you want to learn more about Cognitive Psychology then please check out my book Cognitive Psychology 2nd Edition. Have a great day, Connor.