Author Archives: Sonya Marx

This week, as part of our unit on altruism, we looked at the Bystander Effect. The Bystander Effect can occur in groups of people when an incident takes place and people don’t respond or try to help, effectively becoming bystanders in the situation. This can occur for a variety of reasons, including diffusion of responsibility,Continue reading “Post #6: The Bystander Effect and Technology in the Age of Corona”

When priming was mentioned this week on one of the podcasts I listen to regularly, I took it as a sign that now is the perfect opportunity to write a blog post about priming in movies and TV. The podcast mentioned an example from the movie “The Exorcist”,  which I have not seen, and mightContinue reading “Post #5: Priming and Movies”

Wow, the world is such a different place since I last wrote one of these. While we are in the midst of a global pandemic (yikes), maybe one of the advantages (??) to the situation is that it gives us a unique opportunity to observe some psychological phenomena up close and personally with the peopleContinue reading “Post #4: Dancing in Isolation: Applying Social Psychology in Socially Distanced Situations”

This week, as a result of falling down a deep youtube hole, I happened upon an eight minute standup routine by comedian Mekki Leeper. I noticed some resonances of concepts we’ve discussed in social psychology, so I thought I’d write about them here.  Representative Heuristic: Leeper opens his set by talking about his identity. WhileContinue reading “Post #3: Representative Heuristic and Base-Rate Fallacy”

So, last weekend, I spent longer than I should have (read: 10+ hours of my life) bingeing the first season of the Netflix original series “You.” The show stars Dan Humphrey — sorry, Penn Badgley — as Joe, and Elizabeth Lail as Beck, Joe’s love interest. Short synopsis (spoilers ahead): boy meets girl, boy stalksContinue reading “Post #2: The Power of the Situation and Self-Monitoring”

This past weekend, I attended a show at the Wexner Center in Columbus as part of my course of study for another class I’m taking this semester, Contemporary Dance History. Going into the performance, I didn’t have much information about the artist or what exactly the event would consist of. All I knew was theContinue reading “Post #1: Confirmation Bias”