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The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Why Blocked Goals Make People Lash Out

The frustration-aggression hypothesis, introduced by John Dollard, Neal Miller, and their colleagues at Yale in 1939, proposes that frustration — defined as the blocking of a goal-directed behavior — always leads to some form of aggression, and that aggression is always caused by frustration. Few ideas in social psychology sparked as much debate, inspired as much follow-up research, or held...

Emerging Adulthood: Arnett’s Theory of the In-Between Stage After Adolescence

Emerging adulthood is a distinct developmental stage spanning roughly ages 18 to 25, first proposed by psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett in 2000. It sits between the end of adolescence and the full responsibilities of adult life — and according to Arnett, it is not simply a transition period but a stage with its own defining features, psychological tasks, and inner...

The Misinformation Effect: Real-Life Examples That Show How Easily Memory Gets Rewritten

The misinformation effect occurs when a person’s memory of an event is altered by false or misleading information encountered after the fact. First documented by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus in the 1970s, the effect reveals something uncomfortable about human cognition: memory is not a recording. It is a reconstruction — and that reconstruction is far more fragile than most people realize....

Correlation vs Causation: Real-Life Examples That Reveal the Difference

Correlation vs causation examples are everywhere — in health headlines, social media feeds, and psychology research papers. A correlation tells you that two variables move together; causation tells you one actually produces the other. These are not the same thing, and treating them as if they were leads to bad science, flawed policy, and decisions that can cause real harm....

Separation Anxiety in Infants and Stranger Anxiety: What’s Normal and Why It Happens

Separation anxiety in infants is the distress babies show when separated from a primary caregiver, typically emerging between 8 and 14 months of age. It often develops alongside infant stranger anxiety — a related but distinct response to unfamiliar faces that appears a little earlier, around 6 to 8 months. Both are signs of healthy cognitive and emotional development, not...

Episodic vs Semantic Memory: How Your Brain Stores Different Types of Knowledge

Episodic memory and semantic memory are the two major forms of declarative memory — the kind of memory you can consciously access and talk about. Episodic memory stores personal experiences tied to specific times and places, while semantic memory holds general knowledge and facts about the world independent of personal context. The distinction between episodic vs semantic memory, first proposed...

Author: Psychology Notes HQ Editorial Staff