Conceived in literature, tested in psychology
This past week, Winnie-the-Pooh just wouldn’t let me go. Please write about me , he kept whining. And when I told him I’d already written about him last week, he just looked confused.
If a writer, why not writeOn whatever comes in sight?So—the Children’s Books; a shortIntermezzo of a sort:When I wrote them, little thinkingAll my years of pen-and-inkingWould be almost lost amongThose four trifles for the young.With those lines, Alan Alexander Milne—or A...
It was quite a challenge to think of a suitable topic for the first real, post-introduction Literally Psyched column. So many works to choose from (Shakespeare?
My first grade teacher, Mrs. Parker, had short, curly white hair and a low, smooth voice. Every day, right after lunch, she would take the large glasses that she always wore on a gold chain around her neck and place them on her nose...
If this week’s lesson sounds a bit repetitive, it is meant to, not only because it touches on so many of the poor thought habits that Holmes singles out in his attempts to craft Watson into an abler logician, but also because it is the last–for now, at least–of the "Lessons from Sherlock Holmes" series, [...]..
Sometimes, the impossible takes place: Sherlock Holmes makes a mistake. Yes, it happens. The master detective falls prey to some of the very errors he urges us to avoid.
I remember well my amazement when I heard my first ever demonstration of Holmes’s observational and deductional prowess in A Study in Scarlet.
Last week, I wrote about the importance of perspective-taking. This week, I’d like to continue with one of its close relatives, a state that would indeed be largely impossible without its existence: empathy...
I often find myself walking into the kitchen (or the living room or bedroom or wherever), unable to recall why I was going there in the first place.
How do we perceive someone we’ve only just met? How do we judge him, assign him to some sort of category in our mind, explain to ourselves what he is and what he is likely to be?
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