I think it’s time to add the behavioral immune system to the long list of subconscious influences on our choices.
Actively pursuing happiness may not lead to an actual increase in happiness. In fact, it can do the opposite and make you less happy at the end of the day.
Is free will real, or is just one of our happy illusions? As it turns out, the answer might not matter as much as our belief in the answer does. […]
Power changes how we make decisions. That’s what I thought when I first read about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s debacle – and the escapades that have apparently preceded it. Actually, the first […]
Motivation matters. It matters a lot. It matters more than we thought, and might make more of a difference on both performance and life outcomes that we thought possible.
Question: How do you remain mindful when juggling two, three, four, however many things at once? Answer: You probably don’t. For a long time, cognitive scientists have observed that processing […]
What is it about power that changes people – or if not changes, brings out those aspects of them that had heretofore lain dormant? As the old adage goes, power […]
Debate on personality disorders, classifications, diagnoses, and treatments is well worthwhile, and a colorful spokesperson never hurts.
Both too much and too little testosterone increase risk-taking and ambiguity tolerance.
In Guantánamo Files, the New York Times coverage of Guantánamo from WikiLeaks documents, one piece in particular caught my attention: a discussion of the difficulty of judging detainees’ risk of […]
Regarding optical illusions, framing, and choice.
Yesterday, we passed the birthday of Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889). So let’s take a moment to reflect, something that becomes increasingly important as the memory of his infamous reign […]
Today, I was planning to write about memory in decision making, but when I came across this new review in Current Directions in Psychological Science, I felt like I had […]
With the recent publication of Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein, it’s hard to avoid someone, somewhere (the New York Times is a safe bet) writing on the ins and outs […]
Teamwork. Support. Group (there’s that word) synergy. These are all hallmarks of positive business-speak and, one would assume, business practice. They’ve become the modern calling cards of businessmen who want […]
Our decisions matter. You don’t need me to tell you that. Of course they matter. It almost seems a tautology, a restatement of the obvious, of the very definition of “decision.” And yet, even though we make decisions at every point in our lives . . .
How to improve a struggling student’s academic performance has bedeviled educators and parents alike. Is poor performance the fault of the curriculum, the teachers, the student, conditions at home or […]
