Myth: People With Mental Illness Are More Prone to Violence

Heuristics And Biases

Instructors should be prepared to listen for —and challenge — belief perseverance, and can use this myth to highlight how automatic and difficult belief perseverance can be to overcome. More

Can Scientific Rigor and Creativity Coexist?

Will heightened standards for rigor and transparency quash the kind of inventive theories and predictions that have driven psychological science in the first place More

How My Mother Overcomes the “Mother of All Biases”

My mother has opinions. Lots of them. Strong ones. These beliefs are decreed with the force of gospel to all comers: The King’s English is the only proper way to speak. Jack Daniels makes the best bourbon. Airlines pad their flight times to artificially produce more on-time arrivals. Outback Steakhouse’s More

Shot of a young businesswoman sitting at her desk thinking with her eyes closed

Imagining a Positive Outcome Biases Subsequent Memories

Results from two studies suggest that imagining an upcoming event may ‘color’ memory for that event after the fact. More

How To Recognize And Overcome Your Biases

Almost every day, there’s at least one story in the news that involves racism, sexism or another kind of bigotry. But when you hear those stories, do you think, “Well, that’s not me”? Turns out, even among the best-intentioned people, unconscious biases can exist. So how can we identify these More

Whether Eyewitness Memory or DNA, Contaminated Forensic Evidence Is Unreliable

Decades of psychological research have revealed the weaknesses of eyewitness testimony, but APS Fellow John T. Wixted points to a real-life murder conviction to illustrate how DNA evidence can be just as fallible. More