Much of what psychologists and neuroscientists are finding about how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviours echoes ideas and techniques religions have been using for thousands of years. Read more
Posts Tagged ‘psychology’
Psychology rediscovering what religion has known for centuries
Monday, September 20th, 2021Much of what psychologists and neuroscientists are finding about how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviours echoes ideas and techniques that religions have been using for thousands of years. Read more
Priests still too isolated when facing psychological distress
Monday, September 14th, 2020
“Have we, the leaders, been able to hear their suffering?” Bishop Marc Stenger of Troyes in north-central France expressed his doubts on Twitter shortly after two priests in other dioceses within the country took their own lives on August 21 and 23. These were two very different situations. In the first case, Father Jacques Amouzou Read more
Bias -We are hardwired to delude ourselves
Monday, August 20th, 2018I am trying to rid myself of some measure of my present bias, which is the tendency people have, when considering a trade-off between two future moments, to more heavily weight the one closer to the present: Read more
Five ways faith may make marriage more healthy
Friday, December 12th, 2014
“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. … Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I Corinthians 13 The words of the apostle Paul are a familiar text at Read more
How clever people can be foolish
Tuesday, July 8th, 2014
Which is correct?: A. People drown by breathing in water. B. People drown by holding their breath under water. Confronted with such a question, the vast majority of people would know that A was the correct answer. Indeed, most people would know that water in the lungs is proof of death by drowning but that lack of it is Read more
When theology trumps psychology
Tuesday, February 18th, 2014
In the late 1960s, our theology schools were abuzz with the Second Vatican Council, but that had not yet impinged on confessional practice. Among other things, we had “mock confessions”, in which (in front of everyone else) the ordinands took turns at being confessor while our professor, the redoubtable Paul Brassell, took the role of Read more
ADHD, or childhood narcissism?
Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
In a typical American classroom, there are nearly as many diagnosable cases of ADHD as there are of the common cold. In 2008, researchers from the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University found that almost 10 percent of children use cold remedies at any given time. The latest statistics out of the Centers for Disease Read more
Sibling bullying research can destroy anti-bullying movement
Friday, September 13th, 2013
The inevitable has happened. The anti-bullying psychology has finally established a solid bulwark in the home. News of a research study confirming the obvious–that sibling rivalry is an even more pervasive and destructive phenomenon than school bullying–has hit all of the major news outlets, including the most revered of all, The New York Times. Antibullyism Read more
When virtue becomes vice
Friday, September 6th, 2013
After being shot at close range by saloonkeeper John Schrank, a serious fan of term limits, Theodore Roosevelt continued with his scheduled campaign speech, the bullet still lodged in his chest. “It takes more than that to bring down a Bull Moose,” he said, speaking for an hour before consenting to medical treatment. Self-confidence, resilience, Read more