| Research Issues | |
| Stupid Human Tricks | |
| American Scholar, Spring 2004 | |
| Many experiments in psychology and social psychology have drawn harsh criticism by analysts | |
| Was it really necessary for Milgram to prod his subjects to “torture” strangers? | |
| Did Darley and Latane’s experiments on altruism present us with true “laws” of human behavior? | |
| Questions about ethical and methodological issues are explored in this article | |
| Research Synthesis: Protection of Human Subjects of Research: Recent Developments and Future Prospects for the Social Sciences | |
| Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring 2003 | |
| The authors discuss the National Research Act that established the requirement for Institutional Review Boards when humans participate in research | |
| What this has meant and will mean in the future for social and behavioral scientists is reviewed | |
| The Self | |
| Something From Nothing: Seeking a Sense of Self, Lance Strate, A Review of General Semantics, Spring 2003 | |
| This thoughtful article unfolds the notion that a sense of self comes from communicating with others | |
| Various psychological concepts from Freudian theory to autism are discussed in the process of examining from where self originates | |
| Self-Concordance and Subjective Well-Being in Four Cultures | |
| Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, March 2004 | |
| Self-concordance occurs when people pursue goals that best fit their own values and interests rather than goals others tell them they should pursue | |
| In the study presented here, while there existed some differences based on culture, self-concordance or “owning one’s actions” | |
| correlated with subjective well-being, signaling that this may be a universal human value | |
| Making Sense of Self-Esteem, Current Directions in Psychological Science, February 1999 | |
| Why is self-esteem important? | |
| Social psychologist | |
| Because of the severe evolutionary consequences of being rejected, self-esteem developed as a way to check our social standing and take action to repair it when necessary | |
| Why We Overestimate Our Competence, Tori DeAngelis, Monitor on Psychology, February 2003 | |
| Why do people inflate their estimations of their own abilities? | |
| According to DeAngelis, there are many reasons, including the lack of feedback from others | |
| Interestingly, those who have the weakest abilities overestimate the most | |
| As discovered in research on new doctors who inflated their diagnostic abilities, overestimating competence can have important consequences for self and others | |
| Social Cognition and Social Perception | |
| Social Cognition | |
| How Social Perception Can Automatically Influence Behavior | |
| Trends in Cognitive Sciences, January 2004 Knowledge that is incidentally activated in memories can inadvertently influence our behaviors | |
| This is especially likely to happen during social perception and social cognition | |
| Make-Believe Memories | |
| American Psychologist, November 2003 Loftus, a well-known psychologist, explains why | |
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