Empathy vs Sympathy

As you all know, I completely adore and respect Dr Brené Brown.
This is an animation of one of her talks about the difference between empathy and sympathy:

Well, I'm trying to be empathetic, but I often pull out the sympathetic, because wait, that's better than apathetic, right? Yeah, sometimes, "At least I'm not being apathetic, would you like a sandwich?" is the best I can do. And you know what? It's OKAY!

The November Project-Social Psychology in Action!

November Project is a growing movement in which people gather to work out outside of a gym. The founders say the movement is growing because of human contact and encouragement. CBS News' Terrell Brown reports.

This is social behavior and attitude in action! 

Seriously! The Power of Authoritative Words!

The following news clip from CBS: This Morning is about a recent sleep study that found that we can trick our brains into thinking we've had a good night's sleep. Here's an abstract of the actual study that was published in this month's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. Here's a brief rundown of the study in this month's Popular Science.

What I would really like to focus on is the statement that "Someone in authority has to tell me that" for this placebo effect to work.

"If a trusted authority figure gives you information, you will believe it; and the interesting thing is that it doesn't just create inspiration and motivation, it changes physiology." 

That is really an amazing thing. The persuasive effect of the words of a trusted authority figure. It boggles the mind if you sit and just ponder about the implications and ramifications of this statement. Think about it. Seriously!

My MOOC Madness

Hello everyone! My name is Melissa and I'm addicted to MOOCs.

"What are MOOCs?" you may ask. Well, they are Massive Open Online Courses. They are free (unless you choose to donate money, pay for ID-verified certification of completing and passing, or pay for proctored exams.)

Anyway, I could go on and on about the awesomeness of being able to "sit in" on an MIT biology course taught by the esteemed geneticist Eric S. Landers, but I'll let y'all figure that out on your own.

I initially started to look into MOOCs to gain insight into online teaching and get ideas for organizing and developing content for my own online course in social psychology at UCO. (I may have to get over myself and make videos, even my dear honeybunny has begun making videos for LMRoss, Inc. Videos )

And what can I say, I got sucked in. "Oh, I've always been interested in this topic!" "I took this introductory courses 20 years ago, I wonder what's changed?" "Man, I am really rusty on this, I should take some kind of refresher course." "Wow, this wasn't offered where I went to school in the past, I want to take it now!" Yep, I ran down the MOOC rabbit hole faster than Alice in Wonderland. AND I LOVE IT!

The courses I've taken so far are from esteemed universities like Harvard, MIT, Yale, Stanford, and Wellesley. There are courses available from many European universities as well. You can 'audit' a class or try for a 'certificate of completion' which is free, depending on how you want to do it. Many of the courses provide the reading materials for free (although not all of them do) and provide additional/optional readings information for you if you want to explore further. One thing I've noticed, is that even though you may take the same or similar class offered by different places and/or people go ahead and take them all. You can gain different insights and reinforce the basic ideas in your mind.

Here's a list of the various MOOCs I'm enrolled with:

My MOOCS

edX.org

Coursera.org

Open2study.com

futurelearn.com

janux.ou.edu

Stanford openedx

udacity.com

I was going to share all the different courses I'm currently enrolled in but I realized that might be overwhelming. I have completed 5 courses, am currently working on 16 courses, and am enrolled in an additional 35 that have not started yet.

Which brings me back to the thought that I might be addicted to learning. Anyone want to join me in my madness?