Psychology
180 ideas and 315 connections. How the mind works: brain, learning, biases, development, personality, social behavior, mental health and therapy. Labeled by how well the evidence holds up.
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Zoom in to reveal more detail, out for the big picture · click a dot to open it · click a ◆ on a line for how two items connect · +N = hidden details · drag to move.■ psychologist or thinker● theory or model◆ finding or experiment⬢ condition or disorder▲ therapy or method◎ school or movement◉ concept
Schools & history
From philosophy to a science: the big schools.
Brain & biology
Neurons, chemicals and the brain regions behind the mind.
Learning & behavior
How rewards, practice and association shape behavior.
Thinking, memory & biases
Memory, attention and the shortcuts and biases of thinking.
Development & attachment
How we grow, attach and change over a lifetime.
Personality & intelligence
Traits, temperament, intelligence and genes.
Social psychology
How other people change what we think and do.
Emotion, motivation & happiness
Feelings, motivation and what makes people happy.
Mental health & disorders
Depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction and other conditions.
Therapy & treatment
Talk therapies, medications and new treatments.
Every item as its own page (180)
Schools & history
- Scientific psychology (Wundt's Leipzig lab, 1879)
- William James and The Principles of Psychology
- Functionalism: studying what the mind is for
- Psychoanalysis
- Sigmund Freud
- Structuralism: breaking the mind into elements (Titchener)
- The unconscious mind and defense mechanisms
- Alfred Adler and the inferiority complex
- Gestalt psychology: the whole is more than its parts
- Carl Jung: archetypes and psychological types
- Id, ego and superego
- Humanistic psychology (Maslow, Rogers)
- Evolutionary psychology
- WEIRD samples: who psychology studies
- P-hacking and 'false-positive psychology'
- The replication crisis
- Open science: preregistration and registered reports
- Reproducibility Project: under 40% replicated
Brain & biology
- Phineas Gage's iron-rod brain injury
- Brain regions and localization of function
- Neurons and synapses
- Neurotransmitters, the brain's chemical messengers
- Brain imaging: EEG, PET and fMRI
- Serotonin
- Neuroplasticity: the brain rewires with use
- Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison)
- Sleep and dreams
- Dopamine, reward and prediction error
- Split-brain experiments (Sperry, Gazzaniga)
- Brain-training games
- Hippocampus: forming new memories
- Prefrontal cortex: planning and self-control
- Sleep loss, the body clock and health
- The amygdala: threat detection and fear
Learning & behavior
- Thorndike's law of effect
- Classical conditioning (Pavlov's dogs)
- Behaviorism
- John B. Watson
- The 'Little Albert' fear experiment
- Extinction: fading a conditioned response
- B. F. Skinner
- Operant conditioning
- Variable reward schedules
- Observational learning (Bandura, Bobo doll)
- Learned helplessness
- Applied behavior analysis (ABA)
- Habits and habit formation
- Reinforcement and punishment
Thinking, memory & biases
- Memory and how it works
- Spacing and retrieval practice
- The cognitive revolution
- Language and Chomsky's challenge to behaviorism
- Confirmation bias
- Memory systems: short-term, long-term, episodic, procedural
- Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
- Representativeness heuristic (judging by resemblance)
- Availability heuristic
- Anchoring
- False memories and the misinformation effect (Loftus)
- Heuristics and biases
- Working memory
- Present bias (hyperbolic discounting)
- Overconfidence
- Behavioral economics
- Loss aversion
- Prospect theory
- Endowment effect: valuing what we own more
- Richard Thaler
- Framing effects
- Disposition effect: selling winners, holding losers
- Mental accounting
- Sunk cost fallacy
- Learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic)
- Deliberate practice and the '10,000-hour rule'
- Dunning–Kruger effect
- System 1 and System 2 (fast and slow thinking)
- Defaults and 401(k) auto-enrollment
- Nudges and choice architecture
- Attention and its limits
- Perception: how the brain builds what we see
Development & attachment
- Dementia and Alzheimer's disease
- Lev Vygotsky and the zone of proximal development
- Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development
- Erikson's eight psychosocial stages
- Attachment theory (John Bowlby)
- Harlow's monkeys: comfort over food
- Ainsworth's Strange Situation and attachment styles
- Theory of mind (the false-belief test)
- Close relationships: adult attachment and marriage
- Modifiable dementia risk factors
- Social media and teen mental health
- Adolescence and the teenage brain
- Aging: what declines and what doesn't
- Child development and how thinking grows
- Lifespan development
Personality & intelligence
- Heritability: nature and nurture
- Intelligence and the g factor
- IQ tests
- Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- Temperament in infants
- The Big Five personality traits
- Fluid vs crystallized intelligence
- Twin and adoption studies
- Gardner's multiple intelligences
- The Flynn effect: rising IQ scores
- Growth mindset: believing ability can grow (Dweck)
- Personality changes with age (maturity principle)
- Conscientiousness as a life-outcome predictor
- Neuroticism and emotional stability
Social psychology
- Asch conformity experiments
- Cognitive dissonance (Festinger)
- Milgram obedience experiments
- Fundamental attribution error
- The bystander effect
- In-group bias and social identity (Tajfel)
- Stanford prison experiment
- Cialdini's principles of persuasion
- Stereotype threat
- Social priming (the 'slow walking' study)
- Implicit bias and the IAT
- Power posing
- Fraud and scams: why they work
- Group behavior: in-groups, crowds and bystanders
- Social cognition: how we judge people
- Social influence: conformity and obedience
Emotion, motivation & happiness
- Emotions and how they work
- Stress, cortisol and fight-or-flight
- Harvard Study of Adult Development
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs
- Ekman's basic emotions and universal faces
- Grief and the 'five stages'
- Hedonic adaptation (the hedonic treadmill)
- The marshmallow test
- Flow (Csikszentmihalyi)
- Self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness)
- Emotional intelligence
- Ego depletion ('willpower is a muscle')
- Positive psychology (Seligman)
- Grit
- Money and happiness research
- Happiness and well-being
- Motivation
- Self-control and willpower
Mental health & disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Schizophrenia and psychosis
- Autism spectrum
- The 'chemical imbalance' theory of depression
- Rosenhan's 'On Being Sane in Insane Places'
- Burnout
- ADHD
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Gambling disorder
- The DSM, psychiatry's diagnostic manual (now DSM-5-TR)
- Suicide prevention and the 988 lifeline
- Addiction and substance use disorders
- Anxiety disorders
- Depression and mood disorders
- Eating disorders
- Loneliness and social isolation
- Mental disorders: what they are and how common
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Personality disorders
Therapy & treatment
- Talk therapy (psychotherapy)
- Lobotomy
- Brain stimulation: ECT and TMS
- Lithium for bipolar disorder
- Psychiatric medicine: drugs and brain treatments
- Person-centered therapy (Carl Rogers)
- Antipsychotic medications
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; Beck, Ellis)
- The placebo effect
- Exposure therapy
- Mindfulness-based therapies
- The therapeutic alliance
- SSRI antidepressants (e.g., Prozac)
- EMDR (eye movement desensitization)
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
- Ketamine and esketamine for depression
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy (psilocybin, MDMA)
- Psychodynamic therapy