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Phil Harris
May 9, 20183 min read
Babies Know When You Are Faking It
Babies are not blank slates. Lecturing on child and adolescent development I often describe babies as being pre-loaded with systems that...
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Phil Harris
Apr 11, 20182 min read
Paradox: Seeing the Up When Down
Researchers have found that when a person rates their current mental health as 'positive' despite meeting criteria for a mental health...
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Phil Harris
Apr 11, 20183 min read
Emotion, Language and Persuasion
We intuitively use more emotional language to enhance our powers of persuasion, according to research published in Psychological Science,...
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Phil Harris
Mar 28, 20182 min read
How to Overcome Embarrassment: More Third Person Perspective Research
More research on the effect of third person perspectives on anxiety reveals that social embarrassment can be reduced by shifting...
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Phil Harris
Mar 20, 20183 min read
The Smell of Power: Disgust and Voting Patterns
In lectures and training on human development, people are often intrigued when I discuss Johnathan Haidt's research that links the...
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Phil Harris
Mar 4, 20184 min read
Have I Told You My Deja Vu Joke? That Strange Feeling Explained.
Most people can relate to the prickly, unsettling experience of déjà vu: When you're in a new situation, but you feel like you've been...
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Phil Harris
Feb 18, 20181 min read
Infidelity: Key Predictors Identified
A recent study of relationships has found interesting predictors of infidelity within married couples. Read the surprising findings here.
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Phil Harris
Jan 21, 20181 min read
Willpower: Is it all in the mind?
Historically it was always believed that willpower was limited. For example, research showed that those who were encouraged to suppress...
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Phil Harris
Jan 2, 20183 min read
Collaboration Beats Punishments
Punishment might not be an effective means to get members of society to cooperate for the common good, according to a social dilemma...
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Phil Harris
Jan 2, 20182 min read
The Anatomy of Psychopathic Tendencies Found?
Callous-unemotional traits have been linked to deficits in development of the conscience and of empathy. Children and adolescents react...
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Phil Harris
Sep 25, 20171 min read
Emotions Mapped: Try the Interactive Simulation
Doctoral student Alan S. Cowen and Prof. Dacher Keltner, PhD have created a new kind of map. Based on the study of emotion they have...
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Phil Harris
Sep 8, 20173 min read
Why You Should Never Apologise
Sorry is always the hardest word to say, but research on social rejection suggests that you might benefit from sparing yourself this hurt...
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Phil Harris
Sep 8, 20171 min read
Why is Yawning Contagious?
Tackling the big issues of the day, it is surprising how much psychological research is devoted to this subject. The history of...
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Phil Harris
Aug 17, 20172 min read
Male and Female Brains Differ: Suggests Largest Brain Scan Project Ever.
In the largest functional brain imaging study to date, the Amen Clinics (Newport Beach, CA) compared 46,034 brain SPECT (single photon...
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Phil Harris
Aug 17, 20171 min read
Third Person Perspective Reduces Anxiety
More research has emerge regarding self-perception and anxiety. In lecturers I demonstrate how anxiety can be reduced by taking a...
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Phil Harris
Aug 17, 20171 min read
LSD: A Treatment for Mental Health Disorder?
Psychedelic drugs are making a psychiatric comeback. After a lull of half a century, researchers are once again investigating the...
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Phil Harris
Jul 27, 20172 min read
Why People are Convinced Their Right Even When They are Wrong
In lecturers I often discuss how the emotional brain takes the big decisions or hijacks the rational brain without us being aware of it. ...
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Phil Harris
Jul 24, 20171 min read
Love and Lust: The Eyes Have It
Two recent studies caught my eye on body language. In the first study the eye movements of of heterosexual students were tracked whilst...
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Phil Harris
Jul 24, 20171 min read
Synchronicity: The Deep Impact of Communication
How many times have you heard people deride counselling based interventions as just "talk." Interesting advances in brain imaging has...
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Phil Harris
Jul 24, 20171 min read
Are You an Ant or Grasshoper? Decision Making Styles Examined
Decision making is at the heart of many of the interventions I teach, like Motivational Interviewing.However people have different styles...
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