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You Studied psychology…

Do you Apply it In Your Own Life?

A Strategy

Use behavioral neuroscience to make sense of the findings of psychology

For me this has happened in the following Six Epiphanies

A detective peers through a magnifying glass at a question mark, as if to solve a puzzle.

1. It’s an evolutionary feature: Don’t mistake mental features for bugs.

2. Teaching: Apply psychology to teach psychology.

3. Myths: Question public myths and misleading hoaxes.

4. Biopsychosocial: Use the biopsychosocial model correctly.

5. Measurement: Pay attention to measurement.

6. Translational: Apply psychology by translating research.


A worldview called the biopsychosocial model

Using behavioral neuroscience is part of applying the biopsychosocial model devised over 40 years ago by George Engel. Far from being just a vague recommendation to consider behavior at three levels, it is a reminder that most experiences represent interesting interactions among molecular, behavioral, and social influences that can be made quite specific.


BIO: The biological approach comprises everything we think of as inside a person: molecules including genes, cells like bacteria and neurons, and entire systems like the nervous system or the gut-brain axis.

It is confusing to think of the biopsychosocial continuum as three levels, because we can distinguish multiple levels of organization just within the biological “level”.

PSYCHO: The psychological approach includes the person or individual animal and everything we can observe the whole organism doing.

SOCIAL: The social component involves a community or society. New phenomena can appear in this realm such as communication, reproduction, and collective behavior, just as a collection of automobile drivers becomes traffic.

The biopsychosocial model forces us to examine behaving individuals but the host of interactions that control behavior, including genes and a cell’s chemical environment, a culture’s food and its effect on our internal chemistry, or the way that social stress triggers bodily inflammation to influence our moods.

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