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Amy Adkins: Why Do We Dream?
In the 3rd millennium BCE, Mesopotamian kings recorded and interpreted their dreams on wax tablets. In the years since, we haven't paused in our quest to understand why we dream. And while we still don't have any definitive answers, we have some theories. Amy Adkins reveals the top seven reasons why we might dream.
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Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory
Treading new ground in the field of social psychology, Albert Bandura's work has become basic to an understanding of how social forces influence individuals, small groups and large groups. From his early BoBo doll experiments through his work with phobias, to his recent work on self-efficacy, Bandura has given us a sense of how people actively shape their own lives and those of others. Utilizing archival materials and newly shot visuals, students will be introduced to the vocabulary and innovative methods of this influential thinker. Dr. Bandura's narration imbues this video with his compelling presentation style and intellectual authority.
Beau Lotto: Optical Illusions Show How We See
Beau Lotto's color games puzzle your vision, but they also spotlight what you can't normally see: how your brain works. This fun, first-hand look at your own versatile sense of sight reveals how evolution tints your perception of what's really out there.
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The Candle Problem
We explore the candle problem and uncover the implications it has on the way organizations motivate their employees to tackle complex and creative tasks.
Christopher deCharms: A Look Inside the Brain in Real Time
Neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demos an amazing new way to use fMRI to show brain activity while it is happening -- emotion, body movement, pain. (In other words, you can literally see how you feel.) The applications for real-time fMRIs start with chronic pain control and range into the realm of science fiction, but this technology is very real.
Claudia Aguirre: What Would Happen If You Didn't Sleep?
In the United States, it's estimated that 30 percent of adults and 66 percent of adolescents are regularly sleep-deprived. This isn't just a minor inconvenience: staying awake can cause serious bodily harm. Claudia Aguirre shows what happens to your body and brain when you skip sleep.
Cognitive Psychology
This program traces the history of cognitive psychology. It explores the interactions among consciousness, sensation, attention, perception, memory models, decision making, language, and thought. The program also discusses cognitive neuroscience in animals and humans.
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Dan Ariely: What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work?
What motivates us to work? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work.
Dan Dennett: The Illusion of Consciousness
Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.
Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation
Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.
Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle Of Experience s. Memory
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.
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The Enduring Self
This documentary, directed by Patrick Allen, is about personality research. The classroom avenger on a deadly rampage, couples who discover their incompatibility after marriage, recruiters seeking applicants with a rare combination of traits-all reflect the range of issues that fall within the scope of personality. This episode looks briefly at personality from traditional perspectives before focusing on contemporary research.
Ethics in Psychological Research
Introducing ethical concepts related to psychological research, this program discusses the importance of ethics in research and presents an overview of research studies that have raised ethical issues, including research conducted by the Nazis during the Holocaust, Milgram's obedience study, the Tuskegee studies, and Zimbardo's prison study. The program considers the establishment of laws and guidelines for ethical research
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Firing Neurons: Cell Dance
Leonard Bosgraaf, Ph.D., Molecular Shots, Inc, of Groningen, The Netherlands, for "Firing Neurons," a movie created entirely by computer animation.
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder
In this program you will learn the criteria for having a Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the manner in which anxiety can become a pervasive reality in people's lives. We will examine the emerging link between depression and anxiety and some of the limitations that can arise for individuals who struggle daily with this disorder.
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Helen Fisher: The Brain in Love
Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love -- and people who had just been dumped.
Helen Fisher: Why We Love, Why We Cheat
Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes on a tricky topic – love – and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance. She closes with a warning about the potential disaster inherent in antidepressant abuse.
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Howard Gardner: The App Generation
Dr. Howard Gardner has described today's youth as the "App Generation". Dr. Gardner will speak on the power of apps to shape young people and the way digital technology affects their lives in three key areas: identity, intimacy, and imagination. He will discuss apps which limit and those that stimulate our "multiple intelligences".
Howie Mandel Talks about Living with OCD
People know Howie Mandel as a comedian, actor and game show host. But what many fans don't know is how much he suffers from a crippling fear of germs -- something he has joked about before, but never spoken seriously about until now. The 54-year-old "Deal Or No Deal" host suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD -- a debilitating anxiety disorder that produces inescapable repetitive thoughts.
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Intelligence, Motivation, and Emotion
Invitation to Social Psychology
By placing an emphasis on three questions — What is the subject matter of social psychology? What are its methods of investigation? What are some of its findings? —this film is able to provide an overview of the field of social psychology. The program features reenactments of Asch’s experiment on conformity, Bandura and Walters’ work on the social learning of aggression, Milgram’s study of obedience, and Zimbardo’s prison simulation.
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Kelly McGonigal: How To Make Stress Your Friend
Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.
Kevin Breel: Confessions of a Depressed Comic
Kevin Breel didn't look like a depressed kid: team captain, at every party, funny and confident. But he tells the story of the night he realized that -- to save his own life -- he needed to say four simple words.
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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
This program explores how Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory relates to such disciplines as business, nursing, and psychology. The program examines needs relating to physiology, security and safety, belonging and love, esteem, and self-actualization.
Memory, Cognition, and Language
Motivation, Maslow, & Movies
A creative look at Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory.
Multiple Intelligences
Arguing that "reason, intelligence, logic, knowledge are not synomous. . .", Howard Gardner (1983) proposed a new view of intelligence that is rapidly being incorporated in school curricula. In his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Gardner expanded the concept of intelligence to also include such areas as music, spacial relations, and interpersonal knowledge in addition to mathematical and linguistic ability.
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Neuroscience - Behavior and Sensation - Perception
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Patricia Kuhl: The Linguistic Genius of Babies
Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.
Pamela Meyer: How to Spot a Liar
On any given day we're lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lie can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and "hotspots" used by those trained to recognize deception -- and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving.
Perception: The Art of Seeing
How can two people see the same event and make completely opposite judgments about it? Do you think we see the world in much the same way as a camera? This video contends that we don't simply record what we see, we create it by the act of perception.
Discover how a frame can completely change the meaning of what it contains -- whether that frame be a marriage or a work of art. Learn how we tend to fill-in-the-blanks to create a complete picture when pieces are missing. Learn how our sensory system is also a censoring system. Discover how we "see what we believe" more than we "believe what we see." A Telly Award winning video.
Personality and Health Psychology
Psychological Disorders and Treatment of Psychological Disorders
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Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation: Counseling People with Multiple Cultural Identities
Filled with frankness, pathos, and humor, Dr. Espin describes her life as an immigrant, a person of color, a Latina, a woman, a lesbian, and a religious person in psychology.
Dr. Espin discusses how psychological theories that focus on the person rather than the social context are still used to gloss over the impact of societal power structures on the individual.
Researching the Brain
Ultrathin slices of mouse brains offer a mesmerizing look at how brain cells communicate at the tiniest scale. This research may offer clues about how the dance of our own synapses guides and animates us.
Russell Foster: Why Do We Sleep?
Russell Foster is a circadian neuroscientist: He studies the sleep cycles of the brain. And he asks: What do we know about sleep? Not a lot, it turns out, for something we do with one-third of our lives. In this talk, Foster shares three popular theories about why we sleep, busts some myths about how much sleep we need at different ages -- and hints at some bold new uses of sleep as a predictor of mental health.
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Schema Theory Example
This video provides a great example of how schema theory works.
Science of Persuasion
This animated video describes the six universal Principles of Persuasion that have been scientifically proven to make you most effective as reported in Dr. Cialdini’s groundbreaking book, Influence.
Scientific Approach to Psychology
Scott Geller: The Psychology of Self Motivation
Scott Geller is Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech and Director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems in the Department of Psychology. Scott will examine how we can become self-motivated in "The Psychology of Self-Motivation."
Sexuality, Gender, and Life Span Development
Sigmund Freud: The Father of Psychoanalysis
NOVA - Discovery History Psychology (documentary).
Social Psychology
States of Consciousness and Learning
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Tim Brown: Tales of Creativity and Play
Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't).
Trauma-Related Disorders
Our lives are shaped, perhaps in equal measure, by both the qualities that nature instilled in us and by the events that we experience. However, just as our biology can sometimes go out of balance, leading our thoughts, mood or behavior to become disordered, so too can we become impaired by our experiences, so that our perception of the world becomes distressed. This is the case those who have trauma-related disorders, also known as trauma and stressor-related disorders. Individuals with these disorders are exposed to a stressful or traumatic event, leading to a variety of responses, ranging from anxiety to depression, from social withdrawal to reliving the event or events over and over again.What makes these disorders so unique is how intrinsically tied they are to their inciting incidents. This especially requires the clinician to not only be familiar with the effects of a patient's disorder but also its potential origins, and how those have altered the patient's sense of health and well-being.
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Where Do People's Personalities Come From?
Scientists now know with certainty that genes have a pronounced effect on people's personalities, thanks to insights provided by behavioral genetics. See heritability at work in everyday traits ranging from extraversion and neuroticism to smoking, divorce, and even political beliefs.
Woman with 15 Personalities- EEG Test
An EEG test shows physiological evidence of Paula's D.I.D.