Earlier this week, a friend of mine asked me what, as a psychologist, I thought we could do to ensure that the commitment to action stirred up by the presidential election results doesn’t fall by the wayside. I answered her quickly but the question lingered on my mind. I think there are a few general strategies anyone, regardless of the issues close to their heart, can use to maintain accountability and action over time and effect change for midterm elections in 2018 and the next presidential race in 2020.
Continue reading Keep Change Alive: Three Psychology-Based Tactics
Subcategorization is a social identity dynamic that can have either negative or positive ramifications for behavior. This psychological process happens when a person or group is deliberately excluded from comparison. It’s what 
If you live in a big city (or maybe even if you don’t), you’ve likely been targeted at least once for a well-known scam. A well-dressed person near a transit center claims to have fallen on very temporary hard times such as losing a wallet and needs cash for a train or bus ticket home. Could you possibly spare $10 or $20 to help out? They’d normally never ask, and they’ll even mail the money back if you can help them out of a tight spot. Maybe you take pity, only to see the same person telling the same story in the same train station the next week. It’s a con. 
Dedicated co-working spaces are proliferating, and it’s probably a huge relief to small startups and remote workers who can finally enjoy community and collaboration without the price tag associated with an ongoing office lease. Here in Boston, there are at least two major co-working chains (
Even though Boston, where I live, is relatively small, I still find myself sticking to my immediate neighborhood and declaring certain others as “so far away.” So it was a challenge for my friend who moved to one of these “remote” areas to get our group to join him for dinner in his new neighborhood. Fortunately, psychology has a few helpful tips to gain agreement to venture across the city: 
If you wanted people to donate money to help a stranger, how would you do it?