Mark Twain famously popularized the saying “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Statistics can be very persuasive, for good or evil purposes, but graphs representing statistics can be even more so. I’m not implying that people deliberately produce terrible graphs, although some do seem to be pushing an agenda or two. Read more…
I was delighted to receive my author copies of the fourth edition of Discovering Psychology: The Science of Mind yesterday. As some of you know, we lost my dear friend and co-author John Cacioppo three years ago. I asked Steph Cacioppo to step in and help me with the fourth Read more…
Anyone who has spent time around animals suspects that personality, or consistent ways of behaving and thinking, is not unique to humans. Pavlov certainly thought his dogs had personalities, and he is not alone. Our two Australian shepherds certainly have plenty in common–smarts, loyalty, a “velcro dog” need to be Read more…
As much as we love our pets, we also view human life as being in a special category. Is this always the case? Or do we gradually learn to think this way? Matti Wilks, a post doc in the Mind and Development Lab at Yale, is lead author on a Read more…
Back in the day when I was in grad school, I worked with Ron Siegel on hallucinations in rhesus monkeys. Ron had a gadget called a parabolic mirror that made an object at the bottom of the mirror look like it was located a few inches higher. He wanted to Read more…