Social Learning Theory & Bandura’s Bobo Doll

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 26th Aug 2024

As this is the time of year when students go off to college – either returning or for the first time – I have been thinking about when I first started studying psychology at university, and the theories and ideas that I was introduced to regarding human aggression and violence. The university I attended was pretty much split in the middle regarding the faculty/teaching staff: half were ethologists and the other half behaviorists. The ethologists believed that all/near-all human responses were hard-wired and instinctive, whereas the behaviorists, believed we were born as a “blank slate” and it was our experiences...Click To Read More

Why We Are Easily Deceived

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 19th Aug 2024

In last week’s article I looked at how self-deception, which is something we engage in on a daily basis, concerning a variety of potential threats, can put our personal safety at risk. In this article I want to look at some of the reasons why as a species we ae so susceptible to other people’s deception. We may like to believe that we are skilled at identifying deception – partially that which is a result of our own ability to deceive ourselves (which is part of the problem) – but in reality, this is not...Click To Read More

Personal Safety & Self-Deception

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 12th Aug 2024

We tell ourselves “lies” all the time. In fact, humans are the masters of self-deception. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote in his book, “The Anti-Christ” (1895) that “the most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself”, and modern psychology and psychiatry would concur with him. We engage in self-deception on a daily basis. We tell ourselves that we’ll only have one beer when we watch the game, we genuinely “forget” to include the piece of cake/biscuit/snack we had when we’re counting our calories for the day, and if we’re trying to give up smoking for...Click To Read More

Reading Attackers

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 5th Aug 2024

Most of the violent incidents that we are training to deal with are the result of “bad” social interactions e.g. arguments and disputes with strangers that turn physical. Whilst there are those who may imagine that they will be targeted by “Bourne Supremacy” style assassins, be glad/thankful that the person you are most likely to be dealing with is an angry/emotional, untrained and unexperienced individual, who may feel and believe that they have to fight, with their “rational” sense telling them that they don’t want to. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t learn how to handle and deal with committed...Click To Read More