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Link Feast

We trawled the web for this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links.

08 August 2015

By Christian Jarrett

Fifty Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid: A List of Inaccurate, Misleading, Misused, Ambiguous, and Logically Confused Words and Phrases
Clinical Psychologist Scott Lilienfeld (co-author of 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology and Brainwashed) and his colleagues hope their list will “promote clear thinking and clear writing among students and teachers of psychological science”.

After Damning Torture Report, Psychology Fights For Its Soul
At a huge meeting in Toronto, psychologists are grappling with their role in the U.S. government’s use of torture. “We’ve got a fire in our house, and it’s a devastating fire,” one psychologist told BuzzFeed News. (Digest editor’s last minute update: the APA has just announced that its council has voted to ban psychologists’ involvement in national security interrogations).

Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books
The shortlist was announced this week and includes The Man Who Couldn’t Stop, by David Adam about his (and other people’s) experience of OCD. You can read the opening chapter for free.

666 Evil (audio)
This week, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the 666th episode of the Moral Maze, focused on the apt subject of evil: “As our understanding of psychology and the neurosciences has developed what role should the notion of evil have in our moral, political, and legal thinking?”

Welcome to “I Got a Mind to Tell You”
Emotion expert Joseph LeDoux has launched a new blog for Psychology Today.

Carl Rogers and the Person-Centred Approach
BBC Radio 4 begins a new run of Mind Changers, presented by Claudia Hammond.

Memory and Music at the BBC Proms
At The Psychologist, Professor Susan Hallam MBE reviews a musical performance and a lecture from Professor Daniel Levitin.

The Braggart’s Dilemma: How to Promote Yourself Without Being a Jerk
Over at 99U.com, I looked at whether psychology research can provide any insights on effective self-promotion.

What Emotions Are (and Aren’t)
“Most people, including many scientists, believe that emotions are distinct, locatable entities inside us — but they’re not,” writes Lisa Barrett at the New York Times. “Searching for emotions in this form is as misguided as looking for cerebral clarinets and oboes.”

Mindfulness Is Great, But Spacing Out Is Good for You, Too
The latest animated video in the series from Science of Us at New York magazine.