The Psychology of Us
RJ Starr
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113 episodes — long track record
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Recent Episodes
The Psychology of the Critic
The Psychology of the Critic examines a psychological structure so normalized it has become invisible: the evaluative position. When someone occupies the role of critic, whether as a professional…
The Architecture of the Mind: A New Framework for Understanding Human Experience
In this episode of The Psychology of Us, we explore a new conceptual framework by Professor RJ Starr called Psychological Architecture—a model that organizes human experience around four…
The Psychology of the Cyberbully
The Psychology of the Cyberbully is an episode of The Psychology of Us, a public psychology series by RJ Starr examining the mechanisms underlying human behavior through the lens of Psychological…
The Architecture of Pride: How Group Identity Forms, Excludes, and Endures
Every pride movement on earth — gay pride, national pride, ethnic pride, religious pride, working-class pride, and yes, supremacist pride — runs the same psychological engine. The objects differ. The…
The Tragedy of Almost-Connection
Some relationships fail because the people involved were fundamentally wrong for each other. Their values conflicted. Their emotional temperaments continuously destabilized each other. The fracture…
When Interpretation Becomes Defense
Most people believe they are thinking critically when they go online. Professor RJ Starr's essay "The Psychology of Adversarial Interpretation" makes a more unsettling argument: that what feels like…
The Architecture of Dreaming: Why the Mind Lets Reality Collapse at Night
Dreams are usually treated as irrational, symbolic, random, or neurologically meaningless. We wake from them confused by their contradictions, impossible transitions, distorted timelines, and…
Unfinished Houses: The Architecture of Psychological Adulthood
You meet every legal definition of an adult. You pay taxes, sign contracts, hold a job, maybe own a home. But what if the internal architecture that actually makes someone a functioning adult was…
The Blueprint of Human Experience: Psychological Architecture
In this episode of The Psychology of Us, the conversation introduces the foundational ideas behind Psychological Architecture, a framework developed by psychology educator RJ Starr that examines how…
The Quiet Collapse: Why Connection Is Breaking Down
Something has changed about human connection — and the standard explanations don't go deep enough. Social media, political polarization, economic stress: these are conditions, not mechanisms. They…
Ghosting and the Human Brain: Why Silence Feels So Destabilizing
Being ghosted is one of the most common and disorienting experiences in modern relationships. A conversation stops. Messages go unanswered. A person simply disappears.But why does that silence feel…
Parochial Attribution: Why the Unfamiliar Looks Broken
When you encounter something unfamiliar and your first instinct is that something is wrong with the person in front of you, that reaction is not random. It follows a structure. The cognitive system…
The Psychology of Talking to Machines: Existential Reflection in the Age of Artificial Companions
In this episode of The Psychology of Us, Professor RJ Starr explores a strange but increasingly common modern experience: asking meaningful questions to machines that cannot possibly understand…
The Judgmental Mind: Why It Can't Turn Itself Off
Most people assume that a highly judgmental person simply needs to make a different choice. Be more open. Try harder. But that framing misidentifies the problem entirely. In some psychological…
Why the Internet Feels So Lonely Now
In this episode of The Psychology of Us, Professor RJ Starr explores a quiet but profound shift in digital culture: why scrolling through the internet today can feel strangely lonely.Early social…
The Self That Requires an Audience
There is a behavior that passes reliably for confidence. It occupies space, invites attention, and reads as the expression of a settled, secure sense of self. The person who announces credentials,…
Meaning, Dissolution, and the Architecture of a Livable Life
Meaning is not optimism, and it is not belief. In RJ Starr's Psychological Architecture, meaning is the structural capacity through which experience is organized into coherence, orientation, and…
The Psychology Behind Political Breakdown: A Special Edition Conversation
Most political analysis focuses on positions. This episode focuses on the mind. Drawing on an essay by Professor RJ Starr, this special edition conversation examines what happens psychologically when…
When Change Gets Loud: Understanding the Extinction Burst
Why does change often feel worst right after the moment we decide to improve our lives?This episode explores the psychological phenomenon known as the extinction burst through the work of RJ Starr…
Conspiracy Thinking as Psychological Structure
Conspiracy thinking is often framed as a problem of error—something to be corrected through better information or clearer reasoning. But that framing fails to account for why these beliefs persist,…
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