New York Times
Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments in the early 1960s are some of the most famous in all of psychology. In them, Milgram tested how far people would go in delivering painful shocks to a peer, when instructed to do so by an authority figure – the experimenter, or scientist. The scientist told the volunteers they were participating in a learning experiment, to test how shocks might improve recall of word associations; and he encouraged them to continue raising the voltage of the shocks when the learner gave wrong answers. The “learner” was in fact an actor, giving many wrong answers, and pretending to be receiving shocks. Most of the study participants went to what they thought was the maximum shock level – 450 volts on the machine – despite loud protests and shouts of pain from the learner.
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From the personal collection of Alexandra Milgram
New York Times
Published: June 30,2008
Stanley Milgram’s famous psychology experiments in the 1960s held a dark mirror to the human face.
Positively creative: Happy moods encourage creativity. New research at Indiana University finds that people who are happy choose creative activities strategically in the interest of maintaining or improving their mood. Their unhappy counterparts want to improve their moods, too, but they have a bigger selection of activities — not all creative — from which to choose. [continue reading…]
The work by the researchers from Indiana University, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and Harvard Medical School marks a major step in understanding the most complicated and mysterious organ in the human body. It not only provides a comprehensive map of brain connections (the brain “connectome”), but also describes a novel application of a non-invasive technique that can be used by other scientists to continue mapping the trillions of neural connections in the brain at even greater resolution, which is becoming a new field of science termed “connectomics.” [continue reading…]
Just a few weeks ago you were anxiously counting the days until your precious child came home from college. Now you just can’t wait to restore the peace in your home and get the kid back to school again.
“Often when young adults come home for their first extended leave from college, there can be some conflict in the family,” says Heather Stewart, LCSW, a social worker and primary clinician at The Menninger Clinic. “Roles have changed while the young adult has been away at school. The young adult has had a sense of becoming a true adult. They’ve tested the waters on their own and have set new boundaries like self-inflicted curfews. Where the conflict comes in to play is when these boundaries are not completely in line with the parents’ wants.” [continue reading…]
