Why do people help others? It’s a simple question but it intrigues psychologists because it doesn’t make sense evolutionarily speaking. In this post we look at one simple explanation: empathy. Why do we humans help one another when there’s nothing to be gained for ourselves? This seems to contradict what we know about evolutionary psychology – that we instinctively look …
Key study: Working memory and a dual task study on chess (Robbins et al. 1996)
Looking for a study that supports the working memory model? Here’s a good one. Working memory is the stuff we’re thinking about right now. The working memory model (WMM) was an elaboration of the multi-store model of memory (MSM) as it zooms in on the short-term store and explains how our short-term (working) memory actually works. If you can comprehend …
Key Study: Schemas and Story Interpretations (Anderson et al., 1976)
“No two people read the same novel or watch the same movie.” This is one of my favourite sayings as an English teacher. It conveys the simple fact that our interpretations of stories are based on our personalities, our experiences, our biases, our schemas. While this might be common knowledge now, in the 1970s it was being slowly revealed through …
Key Study: The Office Schema Study (Brewer and Treyens, 1981)
Our life’s memories are filed away in our long-term memory and our mind categories these into clusters, which we call schema. These schema then affect how we process new information and remember old information. At least, these are the claims of schema theory. In this post we’ll look at how these claims are supported by a classic study. Because of …
Key study: Subjective social status and stress in teenagers (Rahal et al. 2019)
Social status is an important predictor of numerous mental and physical health problems. Generally speaking, the lower your social status, the more at risk you are for developing health problems, like chronic stress and heart disease. While socioeconomic status has been extensively researched, more modern studies are focusing on subjective social status. This is particularly relevant for understanding stress in teenagers. …
Key Study: Stress beliefs and health problems (Fischer et al., 2016)
The following information is adapted from our eBook: IB Health Psychology – A Revision Guide. Why do people develop physical health problems? One answer could be based on stress beliefs – if you think stress is bad you might be more likely to have health problems. This was one finding from the following study. Stress is correlated with a number …
Key Study: Cognitive appraisals and the stress response (Lazarus, 1963)
The most influential cognitive explanation of stress is based on “cognitive appraisals” – how we assess the relevance and potential harm of a stressor. The following study is one of many that supports this explanation. Stress is a complex phenomenon that involves biological, psychological and environmental factors. Richard Lazarus was a pre-eminent psychologist in the field of stress research. Along …
Key Study: Social status and stress in Olive Baboons (Sapolsky, 1990)
An interesting finding in the field of stress and health psychology is that people with higher social status are generally in better health: they have lower rates of heart disease, are less obese and live longer. Why? One reason could be because they are less stressed. A lot of our knowledge about stress and health comes from animal studies, particularly those …
Key Study: Schema Theory & the Superwoman Self-schema
Schema theory is one of the most important theories in cognitive psychology, but it can also be one of the more difficult theories to understand. The best way, I’ve found, to understand schema theory is to look at as many real-life examples as possible. In this post, we’ll look at a fascinating example – the AfricanAmerican Superwoman self-schema. A schema …
Power Distance and Plane Crashes: The Gladwell Hypothesis
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book “Outliers.” In this book, Gladwell gives an interesting psychological explanation for why some countries have higher rates of plane crashes than others. The “Gladwell Hypothesis,” as it has come to be known, suggests that plane crashes can be explained by looking at cultural values. In particular, the cultural dimension of “power distance.” Power …