Carol Dweck is one of the most influential social psychologists of the past quarter century. Her work has primarily focused on motivation, personality, and development, and her key contributions have been related to implicit theories of intelligence, or what she calls “mindset.” This 10-minute TED talk, filmed in November 2014, provides readers with a pithy introduction to Dweck’s groundbreaking...

Last January, 1,200 undergraduate students at Yale University signed up for Professor Laurie Santos's seminar about positive psychology entitled "Psychology and the Good Life," making the seminar the most popular class in the history of the university. For those interested in learning more about positive psychology, Santos is teaching a course on Coursera called "The Science of Well-Being." This...

David Chalmers is famous for his delineation of "the hard problem of consciousness" - that is, the very fact that we subjectively experience anything at all. In this talk, Chalmers outlines his distinction between this hard problem and what he sees as the "easy problem" of objectively explaining how the mind and brain work. He then lays out two fresh theories of consciousness. First, he posits...

Readers who want to understand canine behavior or just learn how to train their dog will benefit from Dog Emotion and Cognition. Taught by evolutionary anthropologist and self-professed "dog guy" Brian Hare, this online course offered by Duke University digs into how dogs think and feel and how humans can use psychology to strengthen our connection with canines. Videos and readings cover the...

ePysch, an electronic Psychology text, features all of the important components of a classical psychology textbook but in an accessible and digital format. Written and updated by Mississippi State University professor, Gary L. Bradshaw, the text begins with an excellent introduction to the subject. It then moves on to discussions of The Biological Mind, The Adaptive Mind, The Remembering Mind, The...

Sigmund Freud: Conflict & Culture http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/freud/freud02.html Emotions and Disease: Psychosomatic Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/emotions/psychosomatic.html Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/ Hysteria by T.S. Eliot http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t__s__eliot/poems/15187 Nerves and Narratives: A...

Many of the complex problems facing communities around the world will likely require innovation and creative solutions. Educators looking for ways to encourage creativity in their students may want to check out these suggestions offered on Learner Log, the blog of Annenberg Learner (whose abundant teaching resources have been featured in the Scout Report numerous times over the years). Here,...

Frontiers of Psychology, an open source, peer-reviewed journal with a respectable impact factor of 2.8, publishes across the entire field of psychology. As the website says, readers can find everything "from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, from animal cognition to social psychology." The site is easily navigable....

Housed at the University of California, Berkeley, the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) is "devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior." To achieve this goal, the GGSC enlists a broad range of scholars from various disciplines, publishes a quarterly magazine ("Greater Good"), and maintains an outreach program that...

If you need a little extra accountability and want to have some fun while you're at it, HabitRPG, an online tool that turns your to-do list into a video game, might be just the thing. With HabitRPG anyone can "gamify" their daily and weekly tasks - whether work, school, or wellness related. Along the way, users may compete with friends and join interest groups. This community then reinforces good...