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It was a good while ago (well back in April) when I first talked about In-Mind. Back then it was just starting out as a blog-come-journal-type-thing in social psychology. Well, over the last few months it’s gone from strength-to-strength and it’s one of the sites I make sure that I read when I [...]

Social Comparison Theory and Obesity
As we are becoming more aware of the health implications of obesity and what we eat, from the ‘let some pretentious cow tell you what not to eat’ programmes to the traffic lights (which are appearing on the front of all my favourite foods telling me exactly how unhealthy what I [...]

Zimbardo has been quite a popular character here on PsychBLOG over the last 6 months: he’s released a book (which was reviewed by Phil Banyard), he’s been dropped from the specs and when I get around to finishing the mammoth article there’s a ‘what kind of person volunteers for a prison experiment’ post. [...]

” At 3:20 AM on March 13, 1964, Winston Moseley attacked Catherine (Kitty) Genovese in front of a 2 story Tudor building on Austin Street in Kew Gardens, NY about 50 ft. from a bar known to generate loud, late night rowdiness. He stabbed her twice in the back. Her screams awakened some residents of [...]

This post discusses the sensitive subject of a rape victim and the diffusion of responsibility that was seen around the time of the offence.
In the first year of the course we look at the study conducted by Piliavin in response to diffusion of responsibility (also called the bystander effect) why it occurs and the [...]

I know it’s a shocking title! Oh, there I go again (Sorry). Now we’re all into the new year and starting to get back into those core studies with all you new students I’ve been searching the web for videos that will be of use. At the moment on YouTube there is the [...]

Last months ‘The Psychologist‘ had an excellent book review of Zimbardo’s recent work ‘The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil‘ written by Phil Banyard. The review highlights the very real holes and pitfalls in Zimbardo’s ‘it’s not my fault I was told to’ argument.
The driving force for Philip Zimbardo to write The [...]

I’ve written a lot about the influence of the media over young people’s behaviour, especially aggressive behaviour. Be it tv, video games, or the internet, what effect is this having on the next generation? A recent panorama program “Children’s Fight Club” looked at the effect of the growing trend of children who are [...]