Shows / Why We Do What We Do
Why We Do What We Do
We explain popular and weird, little-known ideas in psychology. Whether you are a little curious about psychology, or a student, or even a professional, we have something for everyone.
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Episodes
Why We Do What We Do210 | Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex Work (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)
Sex work is one of the oldest professions. In places where it is legal (or at least decriminalized), sex work is safe, healthy, and protects the workers. In…
Why We Do What We Do209 | Appliance, Silk, Blue: Anniversary Traditions
There are certain gifts expected for specific anniversary traditions. What may have started out as genuine support eventually blossomed into a practice guide…
Why We Do What We Do208 | I Give You Feels, You Give Me Money Part 2
Emotional marketing is a strategy that has been deeply incorporated into campaigns to solicit donations, sell products, gain brand loyalty, and other uses for…
Why We Do What We Do207 | I Give You Feels, You Give Me Money Part 1
Emotional marketing is a strategy that has been deeply incorporated into campaigns to solicit donations, sell products, gain brand loyalty, and other uses for…
Why We Do What We Do206 | Pavlov, The Man Himself
We are dipping our toes into the bio-cast style of discussions. What do you know about the scientist behind the classic(cal) experiment with teaching dogs to…
- Why We Do What We Do
205 | 1847: A Cannibal Story
This is an exploration of the "psychology" of the circumstances that lead to the decision to cannibalize others to survive. This large group of ambitious…
Why We Do What We Do204 | Book Cover Judgement
Coined by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920, “The Halo Effect” helps us explain how a strong first impression or perceived relation among characteristics…
Why We Do What We Do203 | While We Were Sleeping
Science doesn't really know why sleepwalking occurs. We know it has something to do with certain parts of our brain. What we understand about psychology…
Why We Do What We Do202 | Extreme Altruism
In just the last couple of decades, people have started anonymously donated organs to strangers. In this episode, we tell the story of two people who decided…
Why We Do What We Do201 | 10 Ways To Ruin Your Sleep
Are you one of those people who has trouble falling or staying asleep? There are things you might be doing to make it worse. Tossing and turning, the snooze…
Why We Do What We Do200 | Our Oldest Episode Yet
What do our old friend Stu Law, our writers, Ryan O'Donnell, Matt Cicoria of the Behavioral Observations Podcast, Salena Schilling, and our composer have in…
Why We Do What We Do199 | Teaching Prejudice
In 1968, an Iowa teacher named Jane Elliott created a powerful lesson demonstrating the effects of prejudice with a classroom of white children, in an effort…
Why We Do What We Do198 | Rebels and Iconoclasts
Why we punk rock? Counter-cultures and sub-cultures are a fascinating evolution in the social dynamics of a society when a population reaches a threshold that…
Why We Do What We Do197 | I Was Just Following Orders
Within certain communities that contain a hierarchal structure, most notably the military, the existence of an authoritative figure has a unique effect on…
Why We Do What We Do196 | A Name Eman a
The human tendency to use language to name things is remarkably important and foundational. While we don't delve into the incredibly deep and nerdy philosophy…
Why We Do What We Do195 | Yoga na Love This
Yoga is extremely old but likely began in central Asia thousands of years ago. There are certainly health benefits, and possibly psychological benefits. There…
Why We Do What We Do194 | Canceled
We are not canceled! Or at least we hope not. But this is a discussion about cancel culture. Where it comes from, why we do, and what purpose does it serve?…
Why We Do What We Do193 | Character v Circumstance
Another one of those pesky human biases. Or maybe westerner biases. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to interpret our own behavior as being due to…
Why We Do What We Do192 | The new ABA & OT Podcast
A behavior analyst (ABA) and an occupational therapist shared a love of precision teaching. They decided to collaborate to use the benefits of both approaches…
Why We Do What We Do191 | Don't Trust Your Common Sense
Common sense is what you don't have to think about. It's just intuitively right. Another name for our base reaction to things without thinking first is human…
Why We Do What We Do190 | Why We Believe in Money
When was the last time you thought about money? Chances are pretty recently, if not right before you read this. If you weren’t thinking about money…
Why We Do What We Do189 | Conversion "Therapy" is a No
Conversion "therapy" is predicated on the wrongheaded idea that (a) there is something wrong with people of non-traditional binary sexual identity or…
Why We Do What We Do188 | Real Fake Medicine
Placebos emerged as a standard pharmaceutical research practice as a way of testing out the efficacy of novel treatments with various illnesses. This made it…
Why We Do What We Do187 | Gaslighting
People have been manipulating one another for most of human history. But the term for this kind of manipulation and abuse is fairly new. Coined in a play…
Why We Do What We Do186 | Translating Reality
Interpretation comes in several forms such as translating between languages, interpreting behavioral phenomena, and analyzing data. While we may believe we’re…
Why We Do What We Do185 | Drunk Tank Pink
Many believe you can manipulate colors to influence thoughts and emotions. This is kind of a little bit true. Mostly because clever PR people can leverage…
Why We Do What We Do184 | Holding Back Tears: How to Resist Crying
Although surveys show that men do tend to cry more than women, that disparity disappears when you examine cultures in which crying is not considered taboo…
Why We Do What We Do183 | Handedness and Personality or Just Handedness
Handedness is both genetic and environmentally determined. Consider that left-handedness was demonized by many cultures, and subsequently, many tools and…
Why We Do What We Do182 | How to Protest Safely
Protests have been a human practice for probably as long as we have had civilized groups. This practice is when a group of people unite to actively force…
Why We Do What We Do181 | The Dead Preserved
The practice of mummifying the dead was a process that was prevalent in ancient Egypt and practiced in various forms in several areas of the world for…
Why We Do What We Do180 | Possessed: Exorcisms
Exorcisms are a dangerous practice that have killed people. We explore the history of exorcisms, how they work, what to expect, and why we should avoid them…
Why We Do What We Do179 | Witch Trials
Mystic healing practices existed in many cultures for a large proportion of human history. But for a few hundred years, people, mostly women, were tortured and…
Why We Do What We Do178 | Afraid of the Dark
There are potential evolutionary reasons for fear of darkness, but our language also plays a role. This specific fear, nyctophobia, is relatively innocuous and…
Why We Do What We Do177 | Why I Am A Green Party Supporter (BONUS!)
Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party. For this and the next episode, we sit down and interview everyday citizens who are registered to one of the…
Why We Do What We Do176 | Why I Am A Libertarian
Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party. For this and the next episode, we sit down and interview everyday citizens who are registered to one of the…
Why We Do What We Do175 | Why I Am A Republican
Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party. For this and the next two episodes, we sit down and interview everyday citizens who are registered to one of…
Why We Do What We Do174 | Why I Am A Democrat
Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party. For this and the next three episodes, we sit down and interview everyday citizens who are registered to one of…
Why We Do What We Do173 | Euphemisms: You Know What This Means
Euphemisms act as selected by a given verbal community often as an alternative to a subject that has been regarded as touchy, uncomfortable, or politically…
Why We Do What We Do172 | How to Learn Anything!
It's never too late to learn something new! Learning and teaching are inherently linked, so we spend some time reviewing the best most-evidence based…
Why We Do What We Do171 | Anti-Racism
Black Lives Matter. Special guests Jelisa Scott and Mawule Sevon talk anti-racism and growing up with dark skin in the United States. Links for Today: Check…
Why We Do What We Do170 | The Hawthorne Effect
Workplace performance, be it group or an individual, is something that has been studied for decades. Nearly 100 years ago, a series of studies on worker…
Why We Do What We Do169 | Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a nebulous concept and can mean many things. It's unlikely we should be afraid of the future of AI, but just in case, we laid…
Why We Do What We Do168 | Syphilis Part 2
There is a very unfortunate history of the science of syphilis. One of our great shames is the Tuskegee experiments. However, we also bust a few myths about…
Why We Do What We Do167 | Syphilis Part 1
Syphilis emerged about 500 years ago as a menacing sexually transmitted disease that quickly transcended cultures and remained a present menace until the 20th…
Why We Do What We Do166 | Stockholme Syndrome
Stockholm Syndrome has been a common area of study for close to 50 years following an infamous 1973 bank robbery incident in Sweden. The widely publicized…
Why We Do What We Do165 | Human Nature
"Human nature" is often used as an excuse, explanation, justification, or assumption for the good and bad things that we do. Although we can make general…
Why We Do What We Do164 | Would a Head Transplant Work?
Someone suffering from severe muscle-wasting diseases or other muscular or bone-degenerative diseases that aren't neurological might very much like a new body…
Why We Do What We Do163 | Can You Feel Yourself Being Watched?
Many scientists and the general population have wondered for over 100 years if we possess a “sixth sense” that alerts us to when someone is staring at us from…
Why We Do What We Do162 | Why Do We Dream?
Dreams are influenced by environmental stimuli. There are many theories for why we dream, but how we dream is more interesting anyway. Also, there is…
Why We Do What We Do161 | Board Games
Board games are activities with no particular output. Abraham gets passionate about his favorite topic. There are several recommendations for various games…
Why We Do What We Do160 | Why Do We Kiss Each Other?
We support Black Lives Matter. We recorded this well before the protests began, so nothing is related to the current protests in this episode. Nevertheless, we…
Why We Do What We Do159 | Masturbation: The Original DIY
We support Black Lives Matter. We recorded this well before the protests began, so nothing is related to the current protests in this episode. Nevertheless, we…
Why We Do What We Do158 | Distracted Driving
People drive distractedly because we get fluent at it, because it is boring, and because there is little to no adverse consequence for doing so. Our phones are…
Why We Do What We Do157 | Motivated Reasoning
One of our most common biases is our motivation to rationalize our way through contradictory evidence. This might have an evolutionary advantage. However, it…
Why We Do What We Do156 | Why? Our 3-Year Anniversary With Special Guests!
During our live stream event, the whole team got together to discuss human behavior and ask "why?" Why we ask the question why, why we are gross, why we do (or…
Why We Do What We Do155 | Addicted to Social Media Part 2
In the second part of this discussion, we elaborate on variables that motivate engagement with social media. Furthermore, we consider who is accountable to…
Why We Do What We Do154 | Addicted to Social Media
86% of the world’s population use social media daily, from every culture and walk of life imaginable. Social media has offered us a way to keep in touch and…
Why We Do What We Do153 | Triage: The Best Idea Ever?
Triage is a system of sorting people into categories of priority. Although it seems like common-sense, it had to start somewhere and its current form is newer…
Why We Do What We Do152 | Why and How We Grieve
The "stages" of grief that you may have heard of have gotten a bad reputation because there was a misunderstanding that the proposal was that those are the…
Why We Do What We Do151 | Montessori Schooling (Part 2)
In a more thorough analysis of the history of Montessori schools, we uncovered regulations that may have inadvertently forced dilution of the possible…