Creativity – why does it come naturally for some, but others struggle to use their imagination? What are the best ways to encourage creativity and how do you be more creative? These are just some of the questions I’ve got about creativity, and I’d love to know how to beat the creative block. Read more … Read more
Have you ever had that feeling when you’re working on something where you are totally focused on the task and don’t notice time passing? This feeling of being completely absorbed and ‘in the zone’ is known in the field of psychology as flow. It has been described by one researcher as being the “optimal experience” … Read more
This week’s post is a special one in honour of International Women’s Day 2018. Whilst some of the most famous figures in psychology are men (think Freud, Jung, Milgram etc), this doesn’t mean that women haven’t made a massive contribution to the field. The work of female scientists should be celebrated, so I’ve picked 5 … Read more
I realised earlier today that whilst I’ve written several posts about memory, for example this one, about the different types of memory, the link between smell and memory, whether our memory is trustworthy, and about those with perfect memory syndrome, I’ve never actually written a post about the opposite – forgetting. Why is it that … Read more
How are you feeling today? If you’re anything like me and my friends the answer might well be ‘tired’. In modern society it can seem as though everyone is trying to cram as much as possible into their day, with work, family commitments, studying, exercising and fitting in a social life. This coupled with increased … Read more
The Placebo Effect: a psychological effect in which a treatment which contains no active medical substance causes an improvement in symptoms. For example, a participant in a trial takes a sugar pill believing it could be real medication and find their back pain goes away. This effect has been well documented and is relatively well … Read more
Hi everyone, and Happy New Year! I’m back after having a few weeks off blogging, and plan to stick to my schedule of 1 post a week in 2018 (usually posted on Thursdays, 4pm GMT). To start off this year, I thought I’d talk about a concept in psychology which is being applied more to … Read more
Happy Halloween! Ever wondered why you don’t like clowns, or why just hearing creepy music on a film makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end? Today’s blog post is keeping things topical and asking why is it that we find certain things scary. When we watch a scary film, it … Read more
This post is inspired by a book I read on holiday recently – Derren Brown’s Happy. In this book, Derren talks about ways we can change our mindset in order to feel more content, and builds on the Stoic principle that it is how we feel about events which causes them to affect us, not … Read more
Today’s blog post is about one of the most studied individuals in psychology and neuroscience. By studying him, scientists were able to massively expand their knowledge of how to human brain is structured, and how different abilities (or “functions”) are located in different cortical areas. H.M. was born in 1928, and was 10 when he first … Read more