What Is Positive Reinforcement?
Learn how to harness this powerful principle to improve your life and the lives of others. Positive reinforcement is the process of increasing the future probability of some behavior by following that behavior with a pleasant or desirable consequence (Scott et al, 2017). In other words, positive reinforcement is when you act or behave in a […]
Why You Should Engage in Small Talk
Learn the science behind small talk and how to engage in small talk more effectively. Small talk is a ritualized and formulaic form of conversation, generally consisting of simple exchanges focused on a range of topics that are considered “safe” to talk about for people who might not know each other well (Padilla Cruz, 2005). […]
Why To Prioritize Honesty in Your Life
This article defines honesty and describes its related values. Defining honesty is a little strange, because it is one of those things that seems very simple – honesty is just telling the truth, right? And at the same time, when we try to get more technical, definitions of honesty often become a list of things that an […]
Tips to Improve Your Social Skills
Learn what social skills are, why they’re important and how you can develop your own social skills. So many of the things that we do require some degree of social competency. This makes it difficult to come up with a list of specific social skills. The researchers and psychologists who study these sorts of things don’t […]
What Are Transferable Skills?
Learn why transferable skills are important and how to talk about your own. The average person can expect to hold 12 different jobs in his or her lifetime (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). With all this job-changing, how can you navigate your career in the direction that you want to take it? One […]
What Is Eustress?
Is all stress bad? Is there such a thing as “good” stress? Learn about eustress, what it is, what causes it, and how to use it. Stress is an unavoidable part of life. Whether we are starting a new job, studying for that big test, or even going on a first date we all go […]
What Does It Mean to Love Unconditionally?
What would it mean to experience this kind of love in your life? Unconditional love is love that is freely given – it makes no demands and has no expectations of the object of its love (Watts & Stenner, 2014). It is often conceptualized as existing independent of romantic love, sexual desire, even the bonds of family, although […]
How to Stop Procrastinating
Learn about the science of procrastination and how to change one’s ways. Guess what? Psychologists are far from immune to procrastination, which might explain why they have done tons of research on the topic. Accordingly, there is a comprehensive definition of procrastination. All these details are worth including, because as we’ll see, some behaviors that look like procrastination […]
The Basics of Freudian Theory
Learn about Freudian theory and discover examples of Freud’s contributions to the field. There are many pieces to Freudian theory, which makes it hard to concisely define what Freud’s theory was. First of all, it is important to understand that Freud was trained as a doctor – a neurologist and psychiatrist, to be specific – and was […]