Category: psychology
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Official: Money Makes Us Happy, Happiness Makes Us Money
Newsweek ran an article last year on the link between happiness and money. Here’s an executive summary: Money will make you happier, up to a point. After that, it makes no difference. That point is the wonderfully quantitative ‘point of comfort‘. If you’re happy you’ll typically earn more than those less happy than you. If…
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Pavlov’s Musical Dog
Back in early December 2007, I submitted one of my favourite Psychology jokes to Mind Hacks. The comic strip I sent in was duly posted along with some other interesting links: Ivan Pavlov and Brian Wilson – together at last! This rather unlikely combination seemed to spark a bit of interest, so here is a…
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Screenwipe with Bill O’Reilly and Adam Curtis
I’ve just finished watching S4E3 of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe with its hilarious commentary on modern news reporting… I didn’t realise how completely insane Bill O’Reilly is! Part two of the episode also shows a short film created by the exceptional Adam Curtis – creator of such incredible documentaries as The Century of the Self and…
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Higher Price Makes Cheap Wine Taste Better
Obvious stated, still fascinating. Mind Hacks: Higher price makes cheap wine taste better: A new brain scanning study has supported what we’ve suspected all along, more expensive wine tastes better partly because we expect it to. […] What the volunteers didn’t know was that there were only three different wines, and two of them were…
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Mona Lisa: The Science Behind That Smile
Why does the woman depicted in the Mona Lisa appear to be both smiling and not smiling at the same time? The smile part of the Mona Lisa’s face was painted by Leonardo in low spatial frequencies. This means that when you look right at her mouth, there’s no smile. But if you look at…
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Lying for Education
“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things,…