Tag Archives: individual differences

Individual Differences in the Stanford Prison Experiment – Scott McGreal (Unique—Like Everybody Else)

The Stanford Prison Experiment has long been held up as an example of the power of strong situations to overcome individual differences in personality and choices. The SPE not only did NOT show this, it was not even an adequate test of such a claim. People can still make personal choices even in tough situations.

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Can Turning a Wheel Open Your Mind? – Scott McGreal (Unique—Like Everybody Else)

A research study found that performing clockwise movements actually increased a person’s preference for novelty, whilst counterclockwise movements increased the preference for familiar things. These actions even affected openness to experience, a normally stable feature of personality.

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Precognition and the search for the soul, part 1 – Scott McGreal (Unique—Like Everybody Else)

In 2011, Daryl Bem, who has the distinction of being both a respected social psychologist and an investigator into the paranormal, published a remarkable paper describing a series of experiments which he claimed provided evidence that people can be influenced by events before they have happened.

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Reason Versus Faith? The Interplay of Intuition and Rationality In Supernatural Belief – Scott McGreal (Unique—Like Everybody Else)

Recent papers (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2012; Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2011) have suggested that religious and paranormal beliefs are supported by “intuitive” thought processes and that engaging in “analytical” thought processes can weaken these beliefs, at least temporarily.

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