Social Psych
Situation: My male roommate was late to work and in a hurry. When he went to start his car he realized the battery was dead. He said, "I knew this would happen! Why do the car gods always do this to me? I'm supposed to know about these car things, all the other guys do!"
This situation clearly illustrates three principles of social psychology: hindsight bias, external locus of control, and social comparison. If I knew the reasons why my roommate was running late, there would be even more principles of social psychology to discuss. As it was, my roommate claimed to "know" that his car would not start. He assumed that he knew such a thing would happen. If he had really known it would happen, however, he might not have left on his lights or done whatever he could to prevent the battery from dying. This would have demonstrated foresight instead of hindsight. If my roommate had a car prone to dead batteries, his reaction would have been more one of quiet resignation and immediate action rather than having the bias of false hindsight. His hindsight bias was a type of cognitive coping mechanism that my roommate used to deny the reality that he did not and could not have known that his battery was already dead when he woke up.
Hindsight bias is actually a type of overconfidence in our own cognitive powers. It is the tendency to believe that we are all-knowing and all-powerful, which is more comfortable than the reality that life has a lot of chance elements that we cannot control. Hindsight bias is understandable, given what we know about human nature. Human beings want to be in control of situations; even if human beings have an equal tendency to attribute situations to "God" or "the gods," as we shall see later. From a social psychology perspective, however, hindsight bias is one of the irrational ways people structure their universe....
Clinical Psychology Dissertation - Dream Content as a Therapeutic Approach: Ego Gratification vs. Repressed Feelings An Abstract of a Dissertation Dream Content as a Therapeutic Approach: Ego Gratification vs. Repressed Feelings This study sets out to determine how dreams can be used in a therapeutic environment to discuss feelings from a dream, and how the therapist should engage the patient to discuss them to reveal the relevance of those feelings, in their present,
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