The World of the Mind with Dr. Matthew Sharps
This site is dedicated to the understanding of the mind and brain in the modern world and through the course of human history and evolution. We focus especially on the investigation of perceptual and cognitive processes in the realms of criminal justice, emergency services, science and exploration, and paranormal sightings and beliefs.
Dr. Sharps is a Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Psychology and Forensic Cognitive Science. He has extensive experience in cognitive research, and in criminal justice applications, research, and training.
On this website, you can
Access Dr. Sharps’ blog The Forensic View from the magazine Psychology Today (the blog is free to all readers).
Find Dr. Sharps’ books with convenient direct links to Amazon (just click on the book).
Read new essays, papers, and announcements on cognitive and forensic cognitive science in law enforcement, emergency service, science and exploration, and “paranormal” sightings and interpretations.
Access Dr. Sharps’ podcasts and videos, including Mind Pilot with Dr. Jana Price-Sharps, on which Dr. Sharps is a frequent guest.
Find references to relevant publications, videos, podcasts and professional presentations in Dr. Sharps’ portfolio.
Books
Much of what we think we know may not be true at all.
Based on decades of research and casework in the criminal justice system, forensic cognitive scientist Professor Matthew J. Sharps takes us on a tour of the human mind from a forensic view, a view which incorporates but goes far beyond the critical and sometimes hazardous demands of law enforcement and the world of criminal justice. This is a tour of extraordinary extremes: Cultists commit suicide, or homicide. Perfectly rational people encounter UFOs, space aliens, giant pterodactyls, or even attacking enemy aircraft where none exist at all. Great explorers find mermaids and unicorns that just aren’t there, and equally great scientists find artifacts and architecture created by nonexistent alien civilizations on lifeless planets.
Human mental processes can be bizarre, but they can be understood. Dr. Sharps explains how a forensic view of our minds can help us to understand these perceptions and beliefs, real and unreal, and to avoid seeing and believing in things that aren’t really there at all.
This book may prove to be very helpful to anyone who needs to know what’s real, what isn’t, and what we think is real when in fact we made it up.
A Forensic View can guide us to a better understanding of our minds and our realities.
Firefighters have some of the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the world; but there’s been very little attention paid to the enormous challenges faced by those who serve in this hazardous profession, and perhaps even less to the best ways for firefighters to cope with these challenges on an individual basis. In this book, written especially for the fire service and other emergency first responders, Dr. Matthew Sharps gives practical explanations of major problems and mental obstacles that firefighters confront every day, and presents the scientific background of the best ways to deal with these challenges. Thinking Under Pressure explains the mental basis of greater success for your professional life, your family, and yourself.
Processing Under Pressure was written especially for law enforcement officers and commanders, and for scholars and students of law enforcement in the criminal justice system. In informal, accessible language, this new edition provides law enforcement personnel, researchers, students, legal personnel, and others involved in the criminal justice system with crucial, current, useful information.
This new edition will help you understand…
– High-pressure decision-making and how to improve your own “deciding power.”
– Nervous system functioning under high stress.
– The impact of stress on human memory and insights into effective interview techniques.
– New concepts in shoot/no-shoot decisions and memory for weapons, including long guns.
– Cognitive aspects of PTSD.
– Cognitive factors in “special units,” including bomb squads, undercover operations, and specific “special” aspects of patrol operations.
Processing Under Pressure is intended to provide a special “edge” for success and survival for law enforcement officers and commanders, and to be interesting and useful to students and scholars of law enforcement and the criminal justice system, to the legal profession, and to anyone else interested in the psychology of law enforcement and criminal justice.
Some years ago, extraordinarily high numbers of shark attacks, some of them fatal, were recorded on the southeastern coasts of the United States. These were well-publicized. Despite this, people continued to swim in the sea off the shark-infested beaches. In at least one case, a teenager saw the shark which attacked him before it became aggressive, but even in view of the recent attacks, he thought “Just a shark; probably won’t bug me.”
It did.
During that same summer, a large number of people who encountered a dead whale being eaten by sharks actually walked on the whale’s body while sharks were feeding on it. They also petted the feeding sharks. Some of these people brought their children. At least one person was carrying a baby while petting the feeding sharks in question.
In 19th century San Francisco, directly under what is now the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point was constructed. This was an artillery post intended to guard San Francisco Bay against possible attack by enemy warships, which at that time carried cannon that could smash bricks to pieces. Fort Point was armed with the same kinds of brick-smashing cannon. Everybody in the 19th century knew that 19th century cannon could smash bricks.
Fort Point was built out of bricks.
Human beings have the most powerful brains on the planet. So why do we do things like that?
Aging, Representation and Thought addresses this question in terms of solid research on thinking and memory. We can learn a lot here by examining the mind as it changes through the aging process, a major subject of this book. But in this volume, we also use what we know about thinking and memory, in aging and in younger adulthood, to examine the “walls in the mind,” the functional barriers between representational systems in our brains. These barriers can result in the kinds of decisions that result in our being eaten by sharks, or pulverized by cannon fire in forts that were obsolete before they were built. It’s important to understand these walls in the mind, these barriers; and it’s even more important to understand how we can get around them.
This book presents the results of a long-term research program on these issues. It doesn’t provide all the answers, of course; but it may be very helpful to anyone interested in aging, thinking, and memory, and to anyone who wants to know how good decisions- and really, really bad ones- happen in the first place.
Topics
Featured as a guest speaker on the Mind Pilot Podcast.
YouTube Videos; The World of the Mind
Link to Dr. Sharps’ The Forensic View from Psychology Today posts (Click Here)
Links to Dr. Sharps’ articles in the Skeptical Inquirer. (Click Here)