Psychologyspeaking topic
Turning doomscrolling into brain fuel, whether swapping junk feeds for science explainers is real self-improvement or the same compulsion in a smarter outfit.
— YouTube (Kurzgesagt smart YouTube discourse)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Embodied cognition: do thoughts happen only in the brain, or in the body too? Why do we judge a stranger as a 'warmer' person while holding a hot cup of coffee?
- Neuroticism in the Big Five: anxiety-prone people spot danger earlier. Is that a weakness or an evolutionary advantage?
- Optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles, Seligman: reading a setback as 'always, everywhere, my fault' feeds helplessness. How should we narrate a failure to make bouncing back easier?
- Germans describe the same bridge as 'elegant, slender, beautiful'; Spaniards call it 'strong, sturdy, long'. The reason: 'bridge' is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. The grammatical gender of a lifeless object changes how people see it. How can a word's being 'girl or boy' repaint an object before our eyes?
- The door-in-the-face technique: after turning down an outrageous request, why do we accept the reasonable one that follows more easily? Why does saying no leave us feeling indebted?