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"Self-efficacy is the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations." - Albert Bandura
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The beginning of the 20th century featured an understanding of health that was dominated by a biomedical perspective, characterized by a reductionist point of view in which health was defined as the absence of illness.
Last October (2008), a large email provider launched a new application, the so-called mail goggles, that requires people to quickly solve five moderately complex math problems before they are allowed to send out any email.
The topic of free will has challenged thinkers and inspired debate across multiple disciplines for centuries. What can social psychology contribute? Social psychology is unlikely to provide a convincing answer to questions about whether people have free will. However, social psychology can provide considerable information about the inner processes and the control of behavior. To thinkers who believe in free will, social psychology provides vital evidence about how it happens and is used. To thinkers who disbelieve in free will, social psychology can provide evidence about what real phenomena are mistaken for it.
By late January 2002, the FBI had strategically secured what documents remained at Enron’s Houston headquarters following evidence that employees were destroying documents that implicated them in wrong-doing in what was one of the greatest accounting scandals in United States history.
Recently a student approached me after I gave a lecture on 'Interpersonal Communication' and asked a question about the course's textbook. I answered his question and we spoke for a while about this book. Yet, at a certain moment we realized he was talking about a Marketing textbook, whereas I was referring to the Communication textbook assigned for my course. It turned out that he was about to attend the next lecture, he had never seen his own lecturer and, given that I was standing in front of the lecture room messing with my papers, he assumed I was teaching his course. Most people have experienced situations quite like this. After talking for quite a while, it dawns on you that you are talking at cross purposes.
It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental question for psychology than what it is that makes us human. It’s harder still to come up with an acceptable answer. Great thinkers through the ages have puzzled over the nature of human nature, and so have contemporary psychological theorists. Are we rational animals, intuitive scientists, naked apes, information-processing machines, or battlefields of intrapsychic conflict? Many writers have made suggestions about what makes us human or wthat defines our humanity, some less serious than others (Mark Twain: "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to"). Or is there perhaps no human nature at all, as the existentialists thought, no definition of humanness that works? Plato suggested "featherless biped", only to be refuted when Diogenes produced a plucked chicken.
The link between our mind and our bodily responses has long been studied by persuasion researchers. It goes back to the use of the term "attitude" to refer to the posture of one’s body (Galton, 1884), and to the notion that attitudes may reflect—and be influenced by—expressive motor behaviors (e.g., a scowling face can indicate a hostile attitude; Darwin, 1872). Colloquially, it is common to refer to an attitude as an individual’s position on an issue, although the meaning in this case refers to an evaluative, rather than a physical, orientation.
If your citizenship comes with the responsibility - and privilege - of voting, then every few years you face an interesting challenge. Who will you vote for? Whether you choose to support an incumbent, a celebrated war hero, an experienced government official, or a new face on the political scene, psychologists are incredibly curious about the process by which you come to that decision. There is reason to believe that, coming from a thoughtful and prepared voter, your ballot will reflect an objective assessment of candidate qualifications. You may, for example, use the time before an election to analyze debates, weigh social policies, and scrutinize performance records. With a wealth of political information at the tip of your fingers, only careful, deliberative thinking will contribute to your final decision…right?
The riddle of death
Martin Luther King Jr., the social activist who represents for many the ideal of a meaningful life, foreshadowed his own assassination when he said, "A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live." These words may resonate with us, but Woody Allen spoke for many of us as well when he said, "I’m not afraid of dying – I just don’t want to be there when it happens." The idea of death occupies a unique place in our minds: it is both the sum of all fears and a kind of golden standard by which we measure an individual’s commitment to an ideal. We honor and understand King Jr.’s sacrifice insofar as almost all of us possess ideals for which we believe we would give everything, whether it’s the love of our children, fighting oppression in a foreign country, or protecting our personal freedoms. Yet we empathize with Allen because death seems like a terrifying and unfair fate for us, instilled as we are not only with drives toward self-preservation (we seek food when hungry, react quickly to external threats), but also an advanced consciousness that harbors love and a fear of loss for many aspects of our lives.
"When we talk about the concept of race, most people believe that they know it when they see it but arrive at nothing short of confusion when pressed to define it." E. Higginbotham (1992, p. 253)
Race is a topic that has been explored throughout the history of social psychology research. Typically, this research has focused on how our conceptions (or preconceptions) of race affect our attitudes and behaviors. There is a long line of research examining phenomena such as prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, in-group bias, stereotype threat, self-fulfilling prophecies, and a whole range of related issues. One could argue that an underlying assumption of this research is that all humans are fundamentally equal, regardless of race. In the academic world, there has been consistent support this notion (Anderson & Nickerson, 2005; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005); however, folk notions of race, as a fundamental biological difference, still persist in the United States and many countries around the world (Jayarantne, Ybarra, Sheldon, Brown, Feldbaum, et al., 2006; Smedley & Smedley, 2005; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008).
In-Mind needs your help! In order to offer you the free services we have been providing, we need donations. Please use the button provided below to make donations to our PayPal Account
The beginning of the 20th century featured an understanding of health that was dominated by a biomedical perspective, characterized by a reductionist point of view in which health was defined as the absence of illness. 
Last October (2008), a large email provider launched a new 
The topic of free will has challenged thinkers and inspired debate across multiple disciplines for centuries. What can social psychology contribute? Social psychology is unlikely to provide a convincing answer to questions about whether people have free will. However, social psychology can provide considerable information about the inner processes and the control of behavior. To thinkers who believe in free will, social psychology provides vital evidence about how it happens and is used. To thinkers who disbelieve in free will, social psychology can provide evidence about what real phenomena are mistaken for it.
By late January 2002, the FBI had strategically secured what documents remained at Enron’s Houston headquarters following evidence that employees were destroying documents that implicated them in wrong-doing in what was one of the greatest accounting scandals in United States history. 
It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental question for psychology than what it is that makes us human. It’s harder still to come up with an acceptable answer. Great thinkers through the ages have puzzled over the nature of human nature, and so have contemporary psychological theorists. Are we rational animals, intuitive scientists, naked apes, information-processing machines, or battlefields of intrapsychic conflict? Many writers have made suggestions about what makes us human or wthat defines our humanity, some less serious than others (Mark Twain: "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to"). Or is there perhaps no human nature at all, as the existentialists thought, no definition of humanness that works? Plato suggested "featherless biped", only to be refuted when Diogenes produced a plucked chicken. 
The link between our mind and our bodily responses has long been studied by persuasion researchers. It goes back to the use of the term "attitude" to refer to the posture of one’s body (
Warning signs your lover is bored:
If your citizenship comes with the responsibility - and privilege - of voting, then every few years you face an interesting challenge. Who will you vote for? Whether you choose to support an incumbent, a celebrated war hero, an experienced government official, or a new face on the political scene, psychologists are incredibly curious about the process by which you come to that decision. There is reason to believe that, coming from a thoughtful and prepared voter, your ballot will reflect an objective assessment of candidate qualifications. You may, for example, use the time before an election to analyze debates, weigh social policies, and scrutinize performance records. With a wealth of political information at the tip of your fingers, only careful, deliberative thinking will contribute to your final decision…right?
The riddle of death 
"When we talk about the concept of race, most people believe that they know it when they see it but arrive at nothing short of confusion when pressed to define it."