How to End a Bad Relationship for Good

Sometimes we find ourselves in relationships that make us miserable more than they make us happy, relationships that we know in our hearts a...

Do it for Future You

Source It's only a month and a half into the New Year, and most of us have already abandoned our New Year's resolutions. We h...

SWAG: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough... and I give up!

wikipedia.org Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a j...

Can Mindfulness Make You Happier?

Today's guest post comes from Sarah Roberts, Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at  the University of Quebec in Montreal and blogger a...

How the Rich are Different from the Poor I: Choice

In the many conversations that F. Scott Fitzgerald had with his friend Ernest Hemingway , Fitzgerald was believed to have said that "...

Friday Fun: The Self-Esteem Playlist

Source We make playlists for everything from exercise to studying to lulling ourselves to sleep, so why not make one for self-esteem? Here a...

No Pain, No Gain: The Psychology of Self-Punishment

Source One of my favorite professors once told the following story: She was in the check-out line at the grocery store, and two young childr...

A Game of Thrones: Lessons About Status

source In the Fall of 2012 I will be teaching a new course titled "Status, Power, and Influence" at the University of Illinois . I...

Using Social Psychology to Stay Healthy

source Imagine the following scenario. You learn that a family member has been diagnosed with an illness. This illness has a genetic basis a...

How to survive a break-up: Give yourself a break

Source There is no shortage of advice on how to recover from a bad break-up: keep busy, don't contact your ex, go out with friends, make...

Freudian defense mechanisms: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Source Freud had some weird ideas, but he also had some brilliant ones. Along with Freudian slips , one of my favorites is his classificatio...

SPSP 2012: Poster Highlights

Not actually SPSP but the closest I could find As Amie said in a previous post, SPSP poster sessions are like your " elementary school ...

The Power to be Me

The Power to be Me We certainly have a wealth of anecdotes about what having power does to people: Power has led political figures like Herm...

An unending supply of willpower? All it takes is believing

Need willpower? When you have to work hard on a task that requires a lot of concentration, do you find yourself losing concentration after a...

The probability of your existence: Basically zero

Source At some point after first learning about the birds and the bees as a child (possibly after watching the opening credits of  Look Who...

Want to become a wizard? Just read Harry Potter

source I will never forget when the final installment of the Harry Potter series came out. Myself and a few of my closest friends from coll...

Would you eat the worm?

Source Imagine finding yourself in the following situation. You arrive at a psychology laboratory to participate in an experiment. The exper...

Why do we hurt ourselves?

Source Evolutionary theory - and common sense - suggests that we are motivated to preserve our lives and well-being and avoid causing oursel...

Narcissists know they're narcissists

source While positive self-views are generally considered healthy, adaptive, and attractive, OVERLY positive self-views often have social...

Can the important people in your life help you transcend group differences?

Our significant others (even our X's) influence our new relationships  (source) When I first started graduate school I was enthralled...