Internet Psychologist
How often do you check your email? When you install email software, such as Microsoft Outlook, it is set up to automatically check for new messages every 10 minutes. Few people change the default settings, so most people get used to emails popping into their inbox regularly throughout the day. …
Many web sites never get off the ground; the people setting them up often don’t want to go-ahead and publish because the site isn’t “quite ready”. Indeed, I met a chap a few months ago whose site was still “under construction” after two years of “development” and he was “almost …
The youth of today, eh? Just what are they coming to? They’re an opinionated self-assured bunch aren’t they? Today’s youngsters certainly seem a lot more confident than the teenagers I remember hanging out with. And as for comparing them to those quiet, shy youngsters of the 1940s, well, there is …
Bold researchers speaking at the University of East Anglia today have revealed that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (a popular psychological treatment technique) may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Indeed, some studies suggest that CBT is just as useful as other, less popular therapies, like “psychodynamics”. It all reminds …
The more that neuroscientists learn about the brain, the less they know. Hardly a day goes by without some piece of research leading us to question how our brain works, just when we thought we were coming to an answer. For several years now, psychologists have remained somewhat dumbfounded by …
Go to any business meeting these days and you are sure to find at least one of the speakers suggesting some kind of psychological backing for their claims. For instance, you may often hear that 55% of our communication is “body language”; it’s an oft-repeated claim in business circles. The …
Web users are becoming increasingly impatient, according to the web usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Apparently, we spend much less time waiting for pages to load and to find out what they are about. If it’s not an “instant” message, we move on. Well, apart from the fact that Jakob Nielsen’s …
Neurologists have published new research which shows that we trust people when our levels of oxytocin are high. Oxytocin is a hormone that for years was thought mostly to be involved only in childbirth since one of its principal functions is to open up the birth canal. However, more recently …
Your web site visitors can be manipulated. Indeed, successful web sites do this with great care. They lure you in, almost hypnotically, and get you to do whatever it is they want, such as buy something from them. Copywriting expert Joe Vitale is the pioneer of “hypnotic writing” in which …
Teenagers write more now than ever before. Just think about it; when you were a teenager you probably only wrote at school, doing your homework and then on thank-you letters your Mum made you write. All your other communication was spoken. But things have changed significantly and dramatically. Nowadays, teenagers …
Phil Calvert is a marketing expert who encourages everyone to market themselves “live” at seminars and other events. But he also says that blogging is the equivalent of live marketing because it places you in front of a large audience. Indeed at an Ecademy event he explained to the 250-strong …
Imagine you are at a business meeting where you know no-one. You have arrived, slightly nervous because you are alone. You wander over to the coffee table where another guest at the meeting is pouring themselves a caffeine-laden cup. As they do so they turn to you and say “would …
When you were in your teens did you ever argue with your mum and dad? Did you ever believe you knew everything? Did you ever do things that you now wouldn’t attempt? Probably. The teenage turmoil is all down to the fact that as we develop into young adults we …
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have been pitting the wits of Google against human volunteers. Their study looked at the PageRank of words searched for on Google and compared them with a list of words produced by volunteers. The research, published in Psychological Science, confirms my view that …
Is your face on your web site? Mine is. However, I’ve started to worry about that. The other day, somebody told me that they rated a web site on whether or not the faces that appeared on it were “smiley”. If the faces were serious looking business types, they didn’t …