Category: Psychology
Seeing Through Rose-Tinted Glasses: Understanding the Halo Effect
Welcome back to our exploration of cognitive biases! We’ve previously uncovered how our existing beliefs shape our information intake (confirmation bias), how easily recalled events…
When Ignorance Is Bliss: The Surprising Truth of the Dunning-Kruger Effect
Welcome back to our series on cognitive biases! We’ve journeyed through how our beliefs can filter information (confirmation bias), how easily recalled events can skew…
The Price Is Right? How the Anchoring Effect Influences Your Spending
Welcome back to our series on cognitive biases! We’ve already explored how confirmation bias can make us seek out agreeable information and how the availability…
Is That Really a Thing? How the Availability Heuristic Tricks Our Minds
Welcome back to our exploration of cognitive biases! In our last post, we delved into the world of confirmation bias and how our desire to…
The Echo Chamber Effect: How Confirmation Bias Shapes Our Reality
Welcome back to our series on cognitive biases! After our overview of the mental shortcuts that can influence our thinking, we’re diving into one of…
The Biased Brain: A Guide to Your Mental Shortcuts
Have you ever wondered why you might believe something even when presented with evidence to the contrary? Or why you assume a brand is high-quality…
Advantages of Disadvantages
In his book “David and Goliath,” Malcolm Gladwell talks about cases where an apparent disadvantage may have helped an individual to actually perform better. He…
The Downside of Bonus
Dan Ariely, the renowned behavioral economist and the author of the widely popular book “Predictably Irrational” has some interesting things to say about the effect…
Effect of Technology: Are We Seeing More and Thinking Less?
An article in Medical News Today asks “Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis?” Much of today’s learning and research is relies…
An Interesting Speed Limiting "Nudge"
Here is an interesting “nudge” that I noticed near my local school recently. On one of the bigger streets adjacent to the school, the “School…
Too Many Choices Ruin The Sale
In his book “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell describes an experiment where a store that offered over twenty different types of jam sold significantly less jam than…
Book Review: "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell This is Malcolm Gladwell‘s second book after “The Tipping Point.” In The Tipping Point, Gladwell writes…
The Reality Of Virtual Reality
Do you remember your very first experience with virtual reality? Was it the flight simulator that you played on your PC? Or that car racing…
Irrational Economics
Ever since I stumbled upon the book Predictably Irrational, I have been fascinated by the field of behavioral economics. I have looked for other books…
What You See Is What You "Think" You Get
In his book “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell writes about “Sensation Transference.” He describes what a beer manufacturer realized when they tried to figure out why their…
What You Create Is What You Love
In his book, “Predictably Irrational,” Dan Ariely describes what he calls the IKEA effect. This concept has been selected as one of Harvard Business Reviews’…
Do You Answer The Question Or The Person Asking?
I just saw this interesting post titled “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance” by Shankar Vedantam from Washington Post’s Department of Human Behavior….
How Are You Primed Today?
Picture this. You walk from home to the movie theatre which is a block away. You watch a movie that has a very sombre story…
How Eyewitnesses Are Affected By Confessions
I was just browsing through my Google Reader this morning, and this MedicalNewsToday article caught my eye. There is an experiment described in the article. A…
Implicit Association Tests: Do You Know What You Really Think?
While listening to the audio book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell (review coming soon), I came across some examples of IAT tests. These are tests where…