Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych Files

London needs help and only a person trained in psychology can fix this. There are just too many Londoners using their subway (the "tube") and instead of standing side by side as they go up the escalator, people are doing what they always do - they stand single file on the right of the escalator so that people in a hurry can pass on the left. That's a fine social norm when there aren't that many people, but if London transport is going to be usable as the population grows they're going to have to get people to behave differently. How can we break such a strong norm? It's not just London's problem. When you go up the stairs which side do you stand on? The right of course, and you expect the people coming down the stairs to stay to their right. When someone doesn't follow the norm we can get pretty annoyed. So what can we do to create a wide scale change in behavior? We have to apply a little social psychology.

What comes to mind when you think "nursing home"?  Not so good, right?  Let's change that.  Let's use what we learn from psychology to create exciting places for seniors to live.  We've got the tools provided by Maslow's Hierarchy and by the Self Determination theory.  Here's one way we could revolutionize the "senior years".

Passengers on an airplane spring to action when a stewardess needs help - but a neighborhood in New York City does very little when a woman is attacked. What's different about these situations? How can we take what we learn from the airplane and apply it to the attack? Lecturing the neighborhood residents probably won't help. Can we do anything to the way the neighborhood is laid out to encourage interaction among residents and a greater sense of interdependency among them? That's what we explore in this episode of The Psych Files.

How can we use a little psychology to get you to slow down when you're driving? You'd be surprised.  Very often road signs like "Slow" or a posted speed limit of, say 20 mph does not work.  Drivers go past these signs and nothing bad happens so after a while they're ignored.  We try to make it more personal with signs say, "Drive as if your kids live here", but often that doesn't work.  How about something trickier: what if we enlisted the help of those 3D sidewalk artists?  What could they possibly do?  You'll find out.  

Snapchat got a pretty bad rap over the past few years, but did you know that you actually can use this video messaging app in ways that really do help students see the applications of what their teachers are learning in their everyday lives.  In this episode I share my experiences using Snapchat with my psychology class.  Yes it has it's limitations, but it also has some strengths that I think are worth looking at.  Join me as I explore snapchat and give you samples of "snaps" I sent my students.