Sure, women cannot get pregnant from rape. Also, all mean people are ugly and puppies are immortal.

[Potential trigger warning: Discussion of rape and sexual assault in this post.]

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear:

If you have vaginal sex without protection, you can get pregnant.

For some reason, this concept can be remarkably difficult for people to grasp. It toes the line between “sad” and “kind of funny” when this ignorance simply leads people to wonder if they can successfully avoid pregnancy by having sex while standing up, in a hot tub, or without climaxing.

But when a Senate nominee like Representative Todd Akin tries to claim that a woman’s body can somehow “know” when she is being raped and avoid pregnancy as a result? That’s an entirely new, scary level of ignorance.

London 2012: Psychology at the Olympic Games

I’ve provided links below to all eight PsySociety posts on the psychology of the Olympic games. Click on the links to learn more about what blind judoka can teach us about emotions, how to predict which record-breaking athletes will be accused of drug abuse, why it’s so bad to be in the last lane of the Olympic pool, and more!

Why do swimmers hate Lane 8?

Jon Scheyer | Duke Blue Devils, 2009

Before I went to college, I was never a big basketball fan (for those who know me now, I’m aware that this is probably surprising). As a result, when I arrived for my freshman year at Duke and began attending a ton of basketball games, I had the opportunity to learn an entire dictionary’s worth of terms for the first time.

One of the phrases that I quickly heard was “playing down.” Even though we were highly ranked and expected to do well later in the season against big-ticket teams like the #2 Texas Longhorns (who we eventually beat by 31 points), I was somewhat surprised by the fact that our margins of victories over early opponents were, quite frankly, not as impressive as I had expected them to be.

“Ugh, we’re playing down again. We always do this,” my friend Leah would say.

It wasn’t intentional. The players probably didn’t want to run up the score, but they also probably didn’t want to make every game against a low-ranked opponent a too-close-for-comfort nail-biter. You would think that, given the large difference in rankings (and presumably in ability levels), the better team should be able to maintain a respectable 15-20 point lead — wide enough that no one had to worry about the outcome, but close enough that it wasn’t rubbing the score in the other team’s faces.

Yet…they didn’t. Most of the time they made sloppy mistakes, missing easy 3-point shots or turning over the ball more times than we could count. The looks of frustration on their faces let us know for sure that this wasn’t anything they were doing on purpose. They weren’t thinking, “OK, this is a no-name team…let’s just not play as well as usual.” They were certainly putting in effort, but they simply couldn’t break past a ceiling that seemed to be hanging far lower than usual, even though their skills were demonstrably better when they played higher-ranked teams. In short, as Leah noted, they were “playing down.”

Blind athletes provide clues about the nature of our emotions.

‘Expressions of Joy’ from ‘The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.’

One of the most important ways that we learn how to interact with the world around us is through observational learning. By watching how our friends and family members behave, we learn at a very young age how to do things like turn on a lightbulb, open a door, or play with a doll, without the tedious trial-by-error reinforcement process that would be required if we only learned things through classic behaviorism. With this in mind, it’s only natural to assume that we have learned when to smile politely, wrinkle our noses in disgust, or furrow our brows in anger by watching the people around us react in those ways when presented with similar situations.

‘Expressions of Suffering – Weeping’ from ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.’

But what if observational learning isn’t the only way in which we figure out how to express our emotions? What if those emotional expressions — or at least, some of those expressions — actually come “pre-programmed” into our very nature, and we would make those grimaces, brow-furrows, and polite smiles of thinly-veiled contempt without ever seeing other people make these expressions first?

The psychology of doping accusations: Which athletes raise the most suspicion?

Why do we immediately feel that “ping” of suspicion when some athletes achieve great Olympic feats? And why would certain athletes make us feel that way, while other record-breaking winners don’t inspire the same level of disbelief?

The benefits of seeing a “challenge” where others see a “threat.”

USA Gymnastics/Brian Freed

 

 

You ask [Aly Raisman] about feeling the pressure and she says, ‘I don’t really feel it,’ and you know, I think it’s because she labels it something different in her head. Some kids feel anxiety, feel pressure, she feels excitement. It’s just how you label that.
– Tim Daggett, Olympic commentator, 7/31/12

 

 

When you’re faced with a high-pressure situation, like giving a public speech, taking an important exam, or performing in an athletic competition, it’s only natural to assess whether or not you are adequately prepared. Are you ready to compete? Are you fully rested? Do you remember your notes? According to the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat, these appraisals can lead you to construe the same situation in markedly different ways. If you have enough resources to deal with the situation, you are more likely to view it as a challenge; if you do not, you will perceive the situation as a threat.

These different perceptions (or construals) don’t only impact the literal way that you identify and label these events; they have distinct physiological and functional outcomes as well.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda: Why silver medalists look so blue.

Getty Images/Thomas Coex

McKayla Maroney is not impressed.

Can you blame her? After a solid week of being touted as the “world’s best vaulter,” she came up short at the individual vault event, earning a silver medal after an unanticipated fall during her second vault.

“If only I’d stuck the landing,” reads the look on Maroney’s face. In other words, Maroney was most likely engaging in counterfactual thinking, otherwise known as those pesky “coulda, woulda, shouldas.”

AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

But why would Maroney look so upset? After all, she did earn a silver medal — a fairly impressive feat, by anyone’s standards. And why does the bronze medalist, Russian gymnast Maria Paseka, look so much happier than Maroney?

Olympic greatness: Biology or motivation?

If you tried hard enough, could you have won Olympic gold in the 100 meter dash?

If you’re an entity theorist, your answer is probably “no.” Entity theorists believe that attributes such as personality characteristics, athletic ability, or intelligence are relatively stable traits that are pretty much fixed at birth. However, if you’re an incremental theorist, you might believe that if you had started young enough or trained hard enough, you could have had a chance at earning a spot on the podium. Incremental theorists believe that attributes are malleable, meaning that they can always be improved with practice and effort.