One of the pleasures of writing these essays is the gradual realization of what it is that I am writing about. It’s a process like peeling, although I love all the layers equally, or like exhaling and sinking deeper underwater, although I like the surface, too. I worked on this essay for several weeks, and it was…
How Note-Taking Can Support Understanding: Writing as a Form of Thinking
Here is a video in which I consider a commonplace and apparently straightforward activity, note-taking, and try to show its strangeness and potential. What are we doing when we take notes? Are we simply keeping a record of what we have heard or read, or can note-taking become part of the process through which we…
How to Read Academic Articles: 10 Ideas for Psychology Students
Here is a video in which I offer ten ideas about reading academic articles, especially for students and early-career researchers in psychology and the social sciences. These are ideas to consider, experiment with, and perhaps consciously reject; but even if the style you adopt differs significantly from what I describe here, I still believe this…
How to Write a Literature Review: 5 Steps for Psychology Students
In this video, I discuss a few ideas about writing literature reviews, especially for students and early-career researchers in psychology and the social sciences. I begin with the distinction between a research topic and a research question, and I consider how that distinction can guide our reading, our selection of sources, and the organization of…
Marie Bergström’s The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy
The way modern dating has changed reflects the general pattern of fragmentation and atomization seen in other domains of life. Dating has become disconnected from other social domains, partly due to the growing role of online dating apps. This is the central insight of The New Laws of Love by Marie Bergström, a study of…