I was invited to start a new blog at the Psychology Today website, and I’ve posted there about once a month since March. My new blog is called Bias Fundamentals: Tools to Keep Our Biases in Check. I initially thought I could do both Bias Fundamentals and PARBs Anonymous. I thought there were enough differences between the two blogs that it made […]
My apologies for not posting to the blog for a while. I’ve been working on a book which I’m happy to say is scheduled to come out in April 2018. The book is called The Power of Context: How to Manage Our Bias and Improve Our Understanding of Others. It’s being advertised at multiple book […]
If nearly everybody believes something, then it must be true. If most of us act the same way, then it must be okay to act that way. Right? No. These common-sense ways of drawing conclusions about the world are logical fallacies. They go by names such as the bandwagon fallacy, the naturalistic fallacy, or argumentum […]
Invisible or covert racism is a difficult issue. It refers to subtle or unconscious forms of racial bias, and many white people have difficulty believing it exists. Even people of color aren’t sure it’s there when they notice something in an everyday interaction that feels offensive. Makes sense. Invisible racism is invisible, which technically means […]
Political correctness (PC) has become a complex construct. The PC phrase used to mean speaking or behaving in ways that are not offensive to particular groups of people, as dictated by evolving social norms in our culture or country. But in recent years, the phrase “political correctness” itself has ironically become the not-PC way to […]
One of the goals of this blog is to help people to become more accurate about themselves, others, and the world without becoming depressed. That might sound like a cynical outlook, but there are two sides to this coin. Yes, apparently for most of us, seeing reality exactly for what it is predicts moderate depression. […]
After making a mistake or after something bad happens to you, have you ever become upset or afraid? Has anyone ever tried to comfort you by saying, “it’s not the end of the world” – perhaps even your therapist. Of course it’s not the end of the world. You can’t deny that. Solid logic, right? […]
I haven’t read the books. I await the third movie. But so far the message appears good. Spoiler alert… Future humans are not as pea-brained or primitive or prejudiced as we thought. Future humans (the ones outside Chicago) did not de-evolve into the prejudice-filled faction-based system that we saw in Divergent. They only set up […]
Sometimes we learn about an individual through a third person. Sometimes we hear bad things about that individual which might even constitute gossip. Logically, we should take what we hear with a grain of salt. Hearsay is inadmissible in court after all. But what if your best friend, a trusted colleague, or a loved one […]
I recently read some op-eds that strongly criticized the use of trigger warnings in college (Goldberg, 2014; Lukianoff & Haidt, 2015). Trigger warnings are basically brief oral or written warnings that certain course content may be emotionally disturbing to some students. The issue has become a heated debate. But because there is little to no […]
PARBs Anonymous 