Attitudes, Behavior, & Cognitive Dissonance

In this video I discuss the relationship between attitudes and behavior, including Richard LaPiere’s early work on discriminatory practices and Festinger and Carlsmith’s classic study on cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance refers to the discomfort caused by conflicting attitudes or behaviors, and Festinger and Carlsmith proposed that people will attempt to reduce this dissonance by either changing their attitudes, or less … Read More

Culture & Cultural Dimensions

In this video I discuss how cultural dimensions can be used to think about the general differences between cultures and how culture may influence thought and behavior. I describe Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, based on his research with IBM employees in more than 50 countries around the world. Hofstede investigated 5 cultural dimensions: individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and … Read More

Introduction to Social Psychology

In this video I introduce social psychology and the investigation of how groups, culture, and social context influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I differentiate social psychology from sociology, which generally looks at influence on broader groups rather than individuals. Next I describe some of the research methods that are more common in social psychology, including archival research, naturalistic observation, … Read More

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

In this video I describe Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and its 3 main stages: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. I also provide a description of the Heinz dilemma and how different responses might be categorized into the levels of Kohlberg’s theory. Next I consider criticisms of Kohlberg’s approach as well as more recent ideas related to moral reasoning such … Read More

Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

In this video I describe Diana Baumrind’s 3 main parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. I also describe the addition of neglectful or uninvolved parenting and the outcomes in children associated with each of these parenting styles. Lastly I consider the difficulty of drawing specific conclusions from these outcomes, as children’s personalities and behaviors may influence parenting styles and parents … Read More

Attachment & Bonding

In this video I describe several concepts and theories related to the formation of the relationship between mother and child. These include Konrad Lorenz’s work with imprinting in goslings, Harry Harlow’s work on comfort and security in rhesus macaques, and Mary Ainsworth’s strange situation to assess the quality of attachment. Finally I consider the complexity involved in understanding this relationship … Read More

Lev Vygotsky & The Zone of Proximal Development

In this video I consider how it is that we improve our skills and abilities and how children make progress through different stages of development. This brings us to the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his notion of the zone of proximal development. This refers to tasks outside of a child’s current level of ability that can be … Read More

Cognitive Development: Concrete Operational & Formal Operational Stages

In this video I discuss Piaget’s last two stages of cognitive development; the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage. The concrete operational stage (from about age 6-11) is characterized by improved understanding of the operations of the physical world but errors in abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking. These appear in the formal operational stage, which begins around age … Read More

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development

In this video I begin describing the 4 stages of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Then I provide details of the sensorimotor stage along with more recent research suggesting that infant understanding of the world may be more detailed than Piaget proposed. Infant demonstrating the A-not-B error: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhHkJ… Scientific American Frontiers video with … Read More