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KUT and KUTX news and music podcasts for Austin, Texas and beyond

psychology

Nostalgia

Last month on All Things Considered NPR’s Kelly McEvers and Pop Culture Happy Hour‘s Linda Holmes and Glen Weldon talked about this era of TV and movies, many of which are catering to Gen X nostalgia.

Weldon asserted that, “…the strongest nostalgia you feel is for the stuff that you chose. So in your teens and 20s, you make a decision. You make your first cultural choices. You say, this is mine.”

But is that actually true? How does our brain process memory? And what is nostalgia?

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of nostalgia and how it works in our brains.

Outcome Bias

We’re biased towards what we pay attention to, and we generally pay more attention to outcomes rather than process. Yet, if we really want to learn from our mistakes or our successes, we have to look at the process as well.

On this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke take on outcome bias.

 

 

Mindfulness

When was the last time someone said to you, “just take a breath?” It’s a way to slow down, be in the moment, create space. It’s also a big part of a mindfulness trend.

As Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about in this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, there are a lot of psychological reasons for why and how mindfulness works, and you don’t have to buy a yoga mat and incense to reap the benefits.

The Psychology of Thanksgiving (Rebroadcast)

For many of us, Thanksgiving means spending time with our families, carrying out traditions that we’ve practiced for years.

While it can be very stressful, messy, and challenging to spend time with family members you don’t see very often, it can also be a beautiful time of recentering.

Traditions serve a psychological function. By repeating the same traditional activity with the same group of people over the years, we construct a chronological record of who we’ve been before – and who we are now. It’s a hidden way of staying in touch with the consistent elements of our identities, and it allows us to track ourselves as we develop and change.

Traditions give us an opportunity to become psychologically close to the person that we used to be in childhood, or adolescence – or even as recently as last year. And that’s something to be thankful for.

As always, Dr. Bob Duke and Dr. Art Markman are carving it up. Listen in the audio player above.

Reading Vs. Listening (Rebroadcast)

Have you ever told someone, “Hey, I read that book!” then continued with a guilty, “…well, I listened to the audio version.”

It’s time to wash that guilt right out of your soul, because in this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke, talk about how our brains process information differently based on how we consume it.

Math, Music, and The Brain

There are some things that just feel like they’re true. For example, the idea that people who are gifted musicians are also good at learning math, or vice versa.

However, there isn’t any data that suggests that there are any links in the brain between these proclivities. As Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about in this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, we underestimate the role emotions play in what we believe to be true.

Boredom

It seems that people today carry with them the constant mantra, “I’m so busy.” And as it can be tough to juggle work, kids, and life in general, a lot of that feeling of being overwhelmed may be our own fault.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markaman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the value of boredom, and how to get the most out of your downtime to feel more in control and less stressed.

V&B – Two Guys on Your Head Live: The Psychology of Uncertainty

In this live taping of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke join KUT’s Rebecca McInroy for “The Psychology of Uncertainty”. How can we make sense of tragedy, and how can we prepare ourselves emotionally and psychologically for the unpredictable?

Recorded at the Cactus Cafe Tuesday, October 10th, 2017.

Football and Brain Injury

It can be said that ignorance is bliss, and when it came to football that was the case for our own Dr. Bob Duke. A lifelong football fan, Duke was thrown into a dilemma by a recent study done by researchers at Boston University that revealed that, “chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive, degenerative brain disease found in people with a history of repeated head trauma, may be more common among football players than previously thought.”

Knowing this, the question then became, how can a man who has dedicated his life to studying and teaching about the brain support a spectacle that is so damaging to the brain?

On this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss what it means for Bob to be a fan of football knowing what we now know.

Writer’s Block (Rebroadcast)

Writer’s block! That phrase might induce panic and a recollection of a familiar experience. It’s a very common phenomenon. So what is it?

When in the beginning stages of undertaking a new writing project, a writer might find themselves blocked – stuck in front of a blank page or screen with no thoughts coming to mind. This lack of creative flow is further exacerbated by anxiety over the lack of production – making it a self-perpetuating cycle that can lead to stagnation.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke explain the ins and outs of how and why we sometimes get stuck – and what we can do to help ourselves in those difficult situations.

Praise (Rebroadcast)

“Hey, you know, you’re really good at that.” That feels good to hear, doesn’t it?

Praise always feels good to hear, but not all praise motivates us to try new things, challenge ourselves, or deal with failure.

In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss how to praise in a productive and meaningful way.

Life After Loss: How to Reshape, Move On and Let it Go

A traumatic event in life is like a scratch on a record. Every time the record player, or your mind, runs over the scratch, it skips. This skipping record thought pattern is called rumination. Until we’re able to fill the scratch, it will keep skipping. So how do we fill the scratch, move on and heal? On this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the various ways we live with and explain grief, and they offer some strategies that might help it make sense.

The Value of Understanding

As gratifying as applied research is, to set out to answer a specific research question, it’s not always the best way to come up with new ideas, discover new things, and develop understanding. For these things you need basic research or just a curiosity about the world and how it works.

As Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about on this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, developing and valuing understanding, as opposed to the bottom line, is an important part of uncovering what we don’t even know we don’t know.

 

Pronouns

When it comes to language, the psychology around how we use words is as interesting and as consequential as the words themselves.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of closed classed words in English like pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions, and why it’s so hard for us to change them.

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