For football fans, there is nothing more exciting than a penalty shootout. The final decider between two teams, still deadlocked after hours of football. There is also nothing in football that generates as much debate as penalties. Should you take first or second? Should you predetermine where you are going to shoot? How long should you wait for before shooting? How can the best footballers in the world fail to score … Continue reading The Psychology Behind Penalty Shootouts

Picture this: it’s 11:47 PM, and your next EW is due at midnight. You’re frantically typing away, fueled by a potent mix of panic and a fourth cup of a caffeinated drink which you swore would be your last. Sound familiar? Well, if so, welcome to the not-so-exclusive club of procrastinators – a place where your future self is perpetually more responsible than the present … Continue reading Procrastination: Why We Delay and How to Overcome it

There are many models of addiction that have been developed over the years that attempt to explain the mechanisms behind addiction, and in this article I will be explaining their main ideas in simple terms. Incentive-sensitisation theory (first proposed by Robinson and Berridge in 1993) suggests that changes occur within the brain during initial use of a substance that lead to a hyper-sensitisation to the … Continue reading Psychological Models of Addiction

In the modern day, we are learning to put just as much emphasis on mental illness as pathogenic diseases as we realise how important it is to try to help people overcome mental challenges. A very apparent mental problem is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is a condition triggered by trauma which causes extreme stress and is much more common than most people realise. I intend … Continue reading Mental Scars and PTSD