In essence, confirmation bias is a tendency to see and hear what we want to see and hear, even when reality differs from our perceptions. Psychology students learn in introductory courses that our brains interpret information from our senses to fit our expectations.The Earth-centered model of the universe is an oft-cited example of confirmation bias. Until the 18th century the Catholic Church held that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun, moon and stars rotated around the Earth.Church authorities based their conclusion on the apparent movement of celestial bodies across the >>>

University of Nebraska-Lincoln psychology graduate student Samantha Pittenger created a new approach to studying the revictimization of child sexual assault victims, according to a UNL news release. As a student in the Child Maltreatment Lab, Pittenger began doing her dissertation research on child sexual assault.Revictimization is defined by the Research Advocacy Digest as “the phenomenon in which individuals who have experienced child sexual abuse are at greater risk than others for adolescent >>>

Portrait of young hugging lovers, close-up.Photo Credit: Guryanov Andrey About a year ago, I wrote this column for my college newspaper's special issue on sex, love and intimacy. It's about the difficulties with having sex after experiencing sexual trauma. It's about 99 percent truthful.Nowhere in that column do I tell lies. But I did omit certain things that would have been relevant to include. I wrote a scrubbed clean version of my story partially to make it more palatable, and partially because I didn't fully >>>

Islamabad: Bahria University organised a ten-day training on ‘Hypnosis Therapy’ in collaboration with National Guild Hypnotists (NGH), USA. The objective of the training was to provide 100 hours training on hypnosis-hypnotherapy, which is now a well-established mode of psychotherapy and self-improvement. The participants of the training have learned expertise of treating different psychological problems through techniques of hypnosis. It is also helpful for self-improvement habit changing. The trainers of the training were Dr. Imran Yousuf Muhammad (BCH, CMI), Mind Scientist Master Trainer, >>>

A longtime Knoxville psychologist was reprimanded by the state and fined $1,000 last month, after a May incident in which he dragged a child across his carpeted office floor.Lance Laurence, a psychologist at the Westfield Center, had been providing psychotherapy for the 11-year-old boy for 10 months at the time of the May 13, 2015, incident, the report said.On that date, it said, the boy "cried continuously throughout the therapy session" and refused to leave >>>

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Buy PhotoMembers of the Virgin Valley Theatre Group perform "Agnes of God" on Saturday, Jan. 16.(Photo: Chris Caldwell / Desert Valley Times)Buy PhotoWhen Glen Bjornson first reads through a play script, he constantly asks, "Why would that character say that? Why would she feel that way?"With degrees in psychology and theater, Bjornson just can't help it.“People always ask me, theater and psychology?” said Bjornson, artistic director for the Virgin Valley Theatre Group (VVTG). “How did that happen? Well, they’re actually the exact same thing.”With more than 30 years of community theater >>>

You visit two different websites in the same industry. One of those websites offers you three options, the other presents 15 different choices. Out of the two, which website do you think will perform the best? Naturally, we’d be inclined to think that people love having the power of choice - and they do. They are attracted to - and can become addicted to the possibilities of choice—because they intuitively feel they’ll find something that best satisfies their needs. Related Article: HR's New Weapon of Choice: People Analytics, Care of Big Data But while this might be how >>>

If you've been anywhere near a computer or TV lately, you've probably heard about Winter Storm Jonas. The storm is expected to dump at least a foot of snow in a large area spanning from western Tennessee to the New York City, and the D.C. area might get up to 20 inches. And some people are…really excited about this. Social media is being flooded with tweets and Facebook posts from people who are psyched about the impending snowstorm, and Jonas Brothers-themed storm memes are already popping up. But major snowstorms can also come with negative side effects, >>>

Restaurant reviews on popular platforms such as Zomato, Yelp and TripAdvisor give one a vast insight into concerned restaurants. However, did you know that reviews can also tell a careful observer something about the reviewer’s personality and the general workings of human psychology? According to Dan Jurafsky, a Stanford researcher and his team, analysing the language, the prominence of certain words and the tone of a review can provide an insight into the type of people writing the review. To prove their hypothesis, they carried out a study that looked at almost 900,000 online >>>