Let’s take a school with a teenage population that is troubled by poor examination performance, high levels of truancy and high incidents of bullying. Which would be reasonable options to improve students’ emotion regulation and social functioning? 1. Adolescent Psychology The goals of an educational psychologist addressing such a scenario include the implementation of programs aiming to improve the emotion regulation and social functioning of students and to prevent future development of mental disorders. Adolescence…
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Cognitive Approaches in High-Performance Sport Psychology
Introduction Cognitive theories of the 70s were predominantly based on an information-processing approach (Lachman, Lachman & Butterfieled, 1979), or more simply put ‘minds are bundles of computations.’ (Edelman, 2008, p.181). This view has changed fundamentally over the past decades. The current embodiment approach to cognition proposes a direct link between thinking and skilled action which is critical to sports performance (Moran, 2012). Executive functions are vital for novices to learn novel skill-sets under the oppositional…
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Domestic Violence against Women in Thailand
Domestic Violence: A Brief Description Based on an international landmark study by the World-Health Organization (WHO, 2006; Garcia-Moreno et al., 2006), domestic violence in Thailand ranks high in the categories of sexual violence and combined sexual and physical violence, with higher prevalence in rural areas (Garcia-Moreno et al., p. 1265). A survey by Mahidol University’s National Institute for Child and Family Development in 2012 reported a sharp increase in domestic abuse encompassing 30.8 % of…
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The Psychology of Credit Debt
How do people end up in debt? The following essay on the psychology of credit debt is structured into two parts. The first part investigates why people spend more than they have and the second part asks how a team of social psychologists could develop an effective public campaign against falling into credit debt. Part 1: Why people spend more than they have We can identify a plethora of decision-making processes to why people spend more money…
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Prejudice in Everyday Life: The Example of White Skin Preference
Why prejudice and stereotypes might be inevitable When we talk about stereotypes and prejudice we could argue that they are, to some extent, inevitable. Our natural tendency to draw generalizations from particular social instances based on real group differences (Wright & Taylor, 2007, p.435) and conflicts (Sherif, 1966) creates stereotypes, both positive and negative. Who can honestly say to be entirely free of prejudice? Preconceived negative judgment of others appears unavoidable, especially under social conflict and social…
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Children & Device Dependency
Parents whose toddlers and children have developed an addiction to tablets, mobile phones or the Internet tell pretty much the same story. Once hooked on digital media any withdrawal comes at the price of their children becoming socially unavailable and throwing tantrums once separated from their new toys (Brandon, 2010). Alternatively children spend most of their time hypnotized in front of their irresistible magical screens and estrange from family life. The fact that digital media have the same psychological effects…
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On Aggression between Groups
A conceptual Postscriptum to ‘Is Thailand heading Towards a Failed Nation?’ Dear Readers, for the May Issue of ‘Live Encounters’ I have published an article with the title ‘Is Thailand heading Towards a Failed Nation?’ which can be found here. You can also locate it in the magazine’s PDF version. I found the topic exciting enough to add the post-scriptum below. Special thanks go to Mark Ulyseas for inviting me as an author. Ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation (Brewer, 1999) are obvious…
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The Advent of Online Education (Part II)
The following entry has been inspired by my participation in ‘Effective Online Tutoring’ with Oxford University. Part I explored current trends in online education and its pedagogical implications. The second part explores the psychology behind online learning. A PDF-version of this post is available at The Advent of Online Education, Joana Stella Kompa – Part 2 1. An Introduction to Gilly Salmon’s 5-Stage Model 2. A Note on PBLonline: E-moderating versus e-tutoring 3. Typical Anxieties and…
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The Advent of Online Education (Part I)
The following entry has been inspired by my participation in ‘Effective Online Tutoring’ with Oxford University. Part I explores broadly the current trends in online education and its pedagogical implications. A PDF-version of this post is available at The Advent of Online Education – Part 1 1. Flipped Classrooms and Blended Learning: The Pragmatist’ Approach to Empower Learners 2. Graduate, Postgraduate & Professional Online Courses: Tutor-based Environments for Elites 3. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Educating…
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The Psychology of Eroding Middle Classes
picture above: scene from the documentary ‘American Winter’ (HBO, 2013) Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, professor at Berkeley and the Goldman School of Public Policy, impressed me with his informative and highly recommendable documentary titled ‘Inequality for All’ (Reich, 2013). Reich reconstructs meticulously how the decline of the American middle-class started end of the 70s with stagnating wages while general living costs such as costs for education, healthcare, housing and transport kept…
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Joana Stella Kompa 
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