Month: March 2010
-
Negotiating Over ‘Sacred Values’
When requested to give up a “sacred value”, the inclusion of a financial incentive incites moral outrage, decreases general support for a compromise, increases anger and increases a subject’s approval of “violent opposition”. Research looking at our reactions to such proposalsĀ offersĀ sameĀ suggestions for negotiating over sacred values. A more successful tack for negotiating over sacred values,…
-
Summarising Joel on Software
Now that Joel Spolsky has ‘retired’ from blogging at Joel on Software (in the format the site has been known for, at least), Jan Willem Boer is reading the entire back-catalogue of entries and condensing the knowledge within each essay into a single sentence (or two). The result is a stunning list of tips on…
-
Technological Affluence and Happiness (Everything Except TV is Good)
In a study probing the association between ‘technological affluence’ and general well-being it was found that computers, mobile phones and music players increased self-reported levels of happiness, while television ownership decreased it. That is: the ownership of most modern technological goods makes us happy, except for televisions, which make us sad. Using self-reported life satisfaction…
-
The Checklist Advantage
To ensure that extremely complex tasks–tasks too complex even for “super-specialists”–are performed effectively, accurately and with minimal mistakes, checklists are an invaluable tool, suggested Atul Gawande in a 2007 article in The New Yorker (and everywhere else since, it seems). Gawande illustrates (in an inordinate amount of detail) how seemingly unnecessary checklists can make huge…
-
Why We Should Trust Driving Computers
In light of recent suggestions of technical faults and the ensuing recall of a number of models from Toyota’s line, Robert Wright looks at why we should not worry about driving modern cars. The reasons: the increased risks are negligible, the systems that fail undoubtedly save more lives than not, this is the nature of…
-
Our Reluctance to Trust Driving Computers
The advanced radar systems that are slowly making their way into modern cars are already advanced enough to drive our cars for us and save thousands of lives a year, says Robert Scoble as he discusses the safety systems currently available in Ford and Toyota models. The features Scoble describes (and Ford’s Global Chief Safety…
-
Improving Intelligence by Knowing About Intelligence
Lecturing students on the fact that general intelligence can be improved and that certain races and genders are not naturally more intelligent than others (in-line with current research) can improve test scores–especially for members of the groups typically thought of as having limited intelligence. It’s not just theoretical: the findings were applied successfully to schools…
-
Fertility, Maternal Age and Child Development
In suggesting alternatives to the status quo of high-status women delaying childbirth further and further, Robin Hanson notes that, unlike advanced paternal age, advanced maternal age does not correlate with poor learning and social outcomes in children (in fact, older mothers had children who scored higher). In all cases, we find evidence that children of…
-
Persuasive Design Patterns
The Design with Intent toolkit is a guide to help you design systems to influence a user’s behaviour. The author, Dan Lockton, has subtitled the toolkit 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design. Categorised into the following eight ‘lenses’ (ways to look at design and behaviour) the toolkit proves to be a fantastic resource for…
-
The Influence of Cognitive Fluency
We’ve seen before how the cognitive fluency (how ‘easy’ it is to think of or comprehend something) of restaurant menus, stock ticker codes and physical exercises influence how complex, risky and even beautiful we perceive them to be. A recent PsyBlog article provides a summary of a number of cognitive fluency studies and here are…