The genius and the idiot (Source: Le génie et l’idiot. Journal Métro, February 26, 2013). Voir plus bas pour la version Française. We all wear filtered glasses that distort what we see. They are known as biases or prejudices to most people but psychologists call them core beliefs and schemas. We normally think of bias [...]
Tag Archives: Depression
Aiming high and the pursuit of goals
Some people just don’t seem to care much about things while others seem to make an issue of everything. Our standards determine much of human achievement…and happiness. Except happiness doesn’t always seem to correlate with achievement. In today’s column in Métro, I tell a story of two salesmen, each of whom have very high standards. [...]
Mini-Psych School / L’École Mini-Psy 2011
Bonjour tout le monde (an English message will follow). L’automne dernier, j’ai eu l’honneur d’agir comme hôte de notre 6e édition de l’École Mini-Psy de l’Institut Douglas, une série de présentations qui s’adressent au grand public. Les vidéos des présentations se trouveront sur notre site web à partir du 1er juin, à raison d’une nouvelle vidéo [...]
What’s HIS problem? I’ve gone through worse.
Many factors contribute to stigma in mental illnesses but an important one involves assumptions made when two people experience the same circumstances. It is natural to assume that if we both stub our toes, we will experience similar pain, or if we both lose our jobs we will both have the same reaction. In reality, [...]
How blue is blue: Understanding depression and burnout
Hi folks, Every year the Douglas Institute hosts a series of lectures for the general public called the Mini-Psych School. We then produce DVDs of these lectures and post them on line. In 2009, I gave a lecture entitled How blue is blue? Here it is in two parts. You might want to keep a [...]
Love me, love my broccoli
It’s always amazing to see what triggers someone off. Every once in a while a seemingly innocuous event or statement can really get to us, resulting in a strong emotional reaction (anger, depression, anxiety, etc.). In most cases, this emotion is stirred not so much by the event as it is by the assumptions it [...]
What made me so happy?
What question teaches us more: “What went wrong?” or “What went right?” “What the hell happened there?” is a question I often find myself asking when the golf ball I just hit goes sailing off into the forest. More often than not I just scratch my head and really have no idea. On the other [...]
The judge, jury and witnesses were all paid off
Prejudice is easy to detect in others. It’s much harder to see in ourselves. This is because our attitudes just seem to fit our observations, or perhaps more accurately, our observations happen to fit our attitudes. Of course, trying to figure out whether experience feeds attitudes or attitudes feed experience may be a chicken and [...]
Am I smart or just lucky?
We are constantly facing new challenges. Yet while some of us seem to be better at dealing with them than others, skill and intelligence are not the only qualities that set people apart. Two people with the exact same abilities will have radically different experiences when facing new challenges based on their attributional style and [...]
Standards of happiness
Is there a secret to happiness? Well, I can’t say for sure but if you like to get your psychology from pithy aphorisms there are plenty of secrets out there. One secret to happiness that recently came to my attention was the following: Lower Your Standards! The psychologist in me says YES! I cannot think [...]
