Crafting Coincidence – The Rhetoric of Improbable Events Stockbridge, G. (University of Portsmouth (UK) Coincidences are all about contact – people meeting in unexpected ways, events falling together and lost contacts reviving their connections. Coincidences induce powerful emotions and are frequent instigators of change in people’s lives. While often dismissed as ‘paranormal’, mere statistical misinterpretation […]

Harm Inflation: Measuring Variability in Understandings of Bullying, Prejudice, Trauma, and Mental Disorder McGrath, M. J. (University of Melbourne), Haslam, N. (University of Melbourne) Bullies, bigots, and snowflakes – why have these become such hot-button descriptors in public and private discourse? One explanation is suggested by Haslam’s (2016) theory of concept creep which asserts that […]

Concept Creepers: Who Holds Broader Concepts of Harm? Haslam, N. (University of Melbourne), McGrath, M. (University of Melbourne), Murphy, S., (University of Melbourne), Randall-Dzerdz, K. (University of Melbourne), Wheeler, M., (University of Melbourne) ‘Concept creep’ is the progressive broadening of harm-related concepts over recent decades. This historical phenomenon has been theorised to have mixed blessings, […]

The Effect of Perceived Effort and Perceived Control on Reward Valuation Harmon-Jones, E. (UNSW Sydney), Willoughby, C. (UNSW Sydney), Clarke, D., (UNSW Sydney), Paul, K. (Ghent University), Harmon-Jones, C., (UNSW Sydney) Rewards of higher value cause individuals to exert more effort to obtain them, but effort also influences the valuation of rewards. Past psychological theory […]