20 Apr Too manly to protect the planet?
Gender bias and the environment A stereotype held by men and women is that being “green” is feminine. So some men might avoid or oppose green behavior to protect their manliness. ...
Psychology of Pop Culture
05 Apr Easing Pain
Posted at 05:00h
in Behavioral Science, Psychology of Pop Culture, Social Economics, Social Psychology
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Some of the editors of this blog (and their kids) have long believed that hugs can make pain go away. Researchers (you knew we were heading that way) at the University of Colorado at Boulder have found that holding hands with a loved one can...
04 Apr Life is Short. Eat the Cookie.
Posted at 17:43h
in Behavioral Science, Brain Games, Psychology of Pop Culture, Social Psychology
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Go here for a review of Charles Duhigg’s 2016 book Smarter. Faster. Better. And then a survey/analysis of the business success self-help genre, since the original book of the self-help genre, published in 1859: Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles. (A straightforward beginning, one might say.) How...
28 Mar How Easily We Forget What is Inconvenient!
We can get information about anything, pretty much. Some of it we could use to make better decisions. But if it will threaten our happiness, we’ll just avoid it. We’re really good at selectively absorbing information that affirms what we believe, and forgetting the inconvenient...
20 Mar “People thought we were studying stupidity. But we were studying ourselves.”
Posted at 18:30h
in Behavioral Science, Market Research, Psychology of Pop Culture, Social Psychology
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Michael Lewis’s new book details the friendship that gave us behavioral economics Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. The optimist and the pessimist. The one supremely self-confident and the other dwelling in dark tunnels of self-doubt. They investigated the inner workings of the mind and the curious...
15 Mar Constraints can make you work better
Why do some people succeed with so little, while some fail with so much? Rice University professor Scott Sonenshein, as part of a panel at September’s Behavioral Science and Policy Association Conference in Manhattan, discussed this question and his book Stretch: Unlock the Power of...
07 Mar How to Build the Perfect Team, According to Google
Groups tend to innovate and catch mistakes faster, and find better solutions to problems. Employees have higher job satisfaction. Profitability increases. If it’s a good team, that is. Google (already measuring every aspect of their employees’ lives) assembled a team to, yes, study teams, and turn their...
05 Mar Gendered price differences
Posted at 08:24h
in Behavioral Science, Market Research, Psychology of Pop Culture, Social Economics, Social Psychology
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A recent study found that men selling items on eBay get higher prices than women selling the same items. Researchers acknowledged this finding as one more affirmation that people have different expectations of men and women, and treat them differently. And yes, they found it depressing (at...
14 Feb Behavioral Science in Action
Loss aversion with your latte...
14 Feb Getting In Peak Mental Shape
Posted at 17:48h
in Behavioral Science, Brain Games, Psychology of Pop Culture, Social Psychology
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Embrace sludge...