Pacing through the middle school hallway reverberates with eerie echoes of middle school boys in shoes two sizes too big and girls stumbling in heels. But as eager students inch closer towards the auditorium for one of the many school dances, the music begins to propagate with each and every step, drowning out any background noise. This procession, in … [Read more...] about Psychological Phenomena: 7th Grade Dance and The Bar Room Effect
Psychological Phenomena: Are Bilinguals Smarter, or Are they Merely more “Cultured”?
Individuals who know multiple languages – bilinguals, trilinguals, or even polyglots – are oft portrayed as being more cultured and refined than their monolingual counterparts. But is there truly a difference in intelligence? As a trilingual myself, I have the constant need to control multiple thoughts in multiple languages throughout the course of the day. When speaking … [Read more...] about Psychological Phenomena: Are Bilinguals Smarter, or Are they Merely more “Cultured”?
Psychological Phenomena: The Devil’s in the Details — How to Tell if Someone You Know is Lying
When an individual acts suspiciously, even if it’s for something completely inconsequential, such as your brother eating your delicious turkey sandwich that was once stowed in the refrigerator, or for something more resolute, being able to have some inkling of insight on the truth is critical. Thankfully, a team of psychologists at UCLA has aimed to seek a solution to this … [Read more...] about Psychological Phenomena: The Devil’s in the Details — How to Tell if Someone You Know is Lying
Psychological Phenomena: Somatic Markers and How They Could Save Your Life
The following narrative demonstrates the ability for the mind to store connections, or somatic markers, and its capacity to save an individual’s life. Somatic markers are fundamentally the connections between stimuli that are associated with an emotional and physiological affective state. In other words, the mind is instinctually exposed to a certain emotion when … [Read more...] about Psychological Phenomena: Somatic Markers and How They Could Save Your Life
Psychological Phenomena: Human Spatial Representation: A Narrative on How My Misfortune Led Me Home
The following parable demonstrates my feeble and naïve, but ultimately successful attempt to make it back home amidst the anxiety of being a relatively new driver. Human navigation has been touted as an intrinsic ability: we depend on internalized versions of ‘cognitive maps’ and ‘snapshots’, which capture diverse information about the environment around us and aid us in … [Read more...] about Psychological Phenomena: Human Spatial Representation: A Narrative on How My Misfortune Led Me Home