Welcome to the World of Psychology

In the 1920s Edward Thorndike discovered that when people were asked to rate another person, their ratings were strongly influenced by single personality traits (e.g. appearance). He called this phenomenon the "halo effect"... Keywords: Halo [...]

Reliability is one of the most important quality aspects of measurement instruments. It can be fatal if measurement instruments are not reliable. But how can you determine the reliability of a psychological test or questionnaire? [...]

How free are our decisions? Sometimes our decisions are influenced by subtle or even subliminal signals. In addition scientists often observe a human tendency to choose an option in the middle (Center Stage effect). This [...]

Music may not only be used to influence our consumer behaviour. Fortunately music has another - much more valuable - effect: Music can bring people together. It can make people more helpful (Fried and Berkowitz, [...]

Marketing experts make use of the power of music extensively. In almost all commercials music is one of the key design elements. But what kind of music leads to skyrocketing sales rates? Research suggests that [...]

For a long time a high stress level was associated wit negative health outcomes. In recent years, however, emerging evidence suggests, that it is not only stress itself that causes health problems but also our [...]

Music can influence our emotions and our behavior. But what happens when scientist play around with the controls? Does it make any difference whether a song is played fast or slow, loud or soft or [...]

Without doubt: Music is powerful. It can inspire, it can be uplifting and exhilarating. But can music put us in a buying frenzy? In many shops or restaurants music is used to entice us to [...]

Many manipulation techniques of the advertising industry bypass our conscious mind. Sometimes it is a quiet background music, a pleasant scent or even the behaviour of the people around us that influence our behaviour in [...]

Owing to brain research we know that it is enough to think of ​​a movement (e.g. service in tennis) to activate almost the same areas of the brain, that are involved in the actual movement. [...]