Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych Files

What if you could swap bodies with someone else? What would it be like to be someone of the opposite sex? A different race?  We're getting darn close to being able to do that with new techniques like the Rubber Hand Illusion, the Enfacement illusion, and now the Full body illusion.  You can now virtually switch bodies with someone else and thanks to our mirror neurons and other brain systems, you can have a very different sense of body ownership.  Come listen to me talk about the latest research on this topic and some potential intriguing applications to problems like bullying.

A small number of men cross dress and many movies and broadway shows feature cross dressers (transvestites), so obviously many people find it fascinating and those who cross dress typically enjoy it. Why?  What does it mean about the people who do it?  I was recently cast as Albin/ZaZa in the musical version of the movie "La Cage Aux Folles" so I've been doing a lot it recently.  I decided to take a closer look at cross dressing and see what psychologists think about it.  Along the way, I'll also look at some of the ways we determine how or if a behavior, thought or feeling is "abnormal"