In-Mind Blog

When we think of the world in terms of categories and different groups of people, we think of the various groups to which we belong and our identities within such groups. The groups to which we belong impact how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and the extent to which we express our social identities in order to bolster our self-esteem. This blog will examine how and why people are motivated to express their social identities using social media and, more specifically, will propose that Twitter serves an important identity function for group members. more

In this blog post, I will describe perhaps the greatest challenge facing social psychology (and other social sciences) in the coming decades: The curation and increased accessibility of research findings. I describe several big science efforts that lead to an eventual goal – a search engine of research findings capable of producing instant empirical summaries and translating findings using lay terms. more

How do we make moral judgments? Are people cold, calculating Vulcans? Or are they affectively hot hedonists? Researchers often present morality as a war between vying ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ processes, but in this two-part blog post I argue that the distinction is a false choice. Morality is both hot and cold, but not in the way previous research leads people to believe. more

Play dates or homework? Piano lessons or TV? Mothers generally want the best for their children. However, what is ‘the best’? Happiness or academic achievement? And, how should parents go about raising their children in the ‘best’ way possible? One answer to this question is to be a ‘tiger parent’. This rather harsh ‘Chinese’ parenting style has been advocated to guarantee successful children. In this post, I will discuss if this means that all mothers should become a bit more ferocious when it comes to parenting. more

Politicians, corporations, journalists and even scientists sometimes do it – they tell people things that later on turn out to be incorrect. Yet, getting rid of this so-called misinformation is often easier said than done as false beliefs are particularly sticky. In this blog, I zoom in on the current state of the art in misinformation research. more

In this blog post, I discuss what information people use to decide whether a behavior constitutes discrimination. Similar to the way people organize categories and identify objects, I review research showing that people rely on prototypes when deciding what is and is not discrimination. more