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Video 1: How to Spot a Liar
Description: On any given day we're lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lies can be subtle and counterintuitive. In this TED Talk, Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and “hotspots” used by those trained to recognize deception--and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving.

Video 2: Social Perception: The Just World Hypothesis
Description: In this animation from Khan Academy, learn the fundamentals about the Just World Hypothesis, and why it is employed so pervasively.

Video 3: Should You Trust Your First Impression?
Description: You can't help it; sometimes, you just get a bad feeling about someone that's hard to shake. So, what's happening in your brain when you make that critical (and often lasting) first judgment? Learn the social psychology of first impressions--and why they may indicate that, deep down, people are basically good. Check out this wonderfully animated presentation about impression formation, provided by TED-Ed.

Audio 1: Colleges Straddle Line Between Assault Prevention and Victim-Blaming
Description: As efforts increase around the nation to combat campus sexual assault, one aspect of prevention seems to confound schools the most: how to warn students about staying safe--without sounding like they're blaming the victim. The latest public awareness campaign from the White House focuses on bystanders. A slick new PSA urges students to step in when they see someone who might be in trouble. It follows other efforts aimed at potential perpetrators, to make sure they understand what counts as consent. But as we hear in this report from National Public Radio (NPR), when it comes to raising awareness among potential victims, figuring out what to say is a lot more complicated.

Audio 2: Gain Together, Lose Together: The Weight-Loss “Halo Effect”
Description: Here's another good reason to lose weight: It might benefit your friends, family and co-workers. Such altruism might be just the final “nudge” some of us need. In this report from National Public Radio (NPR), we learn that researchers are finding that the friends and family of obese and overweight individuals who lose weight lost weight themselves, and sometimes a lot of it. The so-called “halo effect” has been shown among people who drink alcohol and people who smoke, as well as those who gain weight. But now, researchers showed a positive halo effect--losing weight.

Audio 3: Researchers Examine Whether First Impressions Are Lasting
Description: Most of us like to think that even though we can’t help but form an impression of someone from looking at a photograph of that person, we would be quite “willing and able” to revise that impression based on experience from a real time encounter. However, as this report from Hidden Brain reveals, recent research shows that when you look at a photograph of someone, it's remarkably difficult to dislodge that first impression--even after we have had a chance to meet the person we initially saw in a photo.

Audio 4: Blaming the Victim in Reverse: The Justice Motive
Description: I’ll bet you’ve heard of the expression, “Whatever doesn’t kill you . . .”, or “Suffering is good for the soul.” Could these expressions represent another way that we deal with our own anxiety after we hear about someone else’s tragedy? Could they be another way of blaming the victim? In this episode of The Psych Files, we explore the Justice Motive.