I am a social psychologist; most people think ‘psychologist’ means therapist, but clinical psychology is only one subdiscipline. There are cognitive psychologists, who do research to understand the way we think (and other stuff), developmental psychologists, who do research to understand….um…. human development across the lifespan, industrial/organizational psychologists who apply psychology to work, health psychologists who study mind-body stuff and health communication etc. Social psychologists do research on all kinds of things, but the bottom line is that humans are social animals, and our behavior is affected by that fact, whether we like it or not. Social psychologists have done some really fascinating studies – some quite controversial, like Zimbardo’s prison studies at Stanford in the 1970s, and Milgram’s obedience studies at Yale in the 1950s.

One very interesting line of research concerns how we understand and learn who we are. We observe ourselves! We don’t realize we know something, or like something, or do something, until we notice that we do it a lot. This is primarily a knitting blog, believe it or not, so let me put this all together: Apparently I’m a sock knitter! I didn’t know that, and if asked to describe myself as a knitter, I don’t think I’d ever say that I’m a sock knitter. (Note, I could also say that I’m a cowl knitter and that would be true…. maybe it’s that I’m an accessory knitter.)

I just noticed that all the posts showing on this page feature socks. And if I look at my ravelry project page – the sock edition – I see 9 pairs of socks.

Hi. My name is Lori and I’m a sock knitter. What do you know about yourself from observing?