Category: psychology
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Moral Licensing and How Good Deeds Make Us Do Bad Deeds
Be stingy with praise for moral behaviour, Robin Hanson suggests, as by doing so people will strive to be more moral to win more difficult-to-obtain praise. In support of this “stingy school of thought on moral praise”, Hanson points to studies of contradictory behaviour known as “moral licensing”: these studies show how small, seemingly moral…
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Language’s Influence on Culture
I’ve written before about Lera Boroditsky’s fascinating research into how language affects thinking, and a recent article by Boroditsky in The Wall Street Journal covers similar ground, asking Does language influence culture? The answer, it seems, is yes: Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate…
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The Advantage of Busywork: Happiness
“We are happier when busy but our instinct is for idleness”, says Christopher Hsee, a researcher at the University of Chicago who has been studying the link between busyness and happiness. What this means is that work conducted merely to keep us busy (so-called busywork) can actually increase our happiness, despite what conventional wisdom suggests…
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Foreign Accents Make Statements Less Trustworthy
Due to the principles of processing fluency (also known as cognitive fluency, discussed here many times before), we know that information that is easier to process is perceived to be–among other features–more familiar, pleasant, truthful and less risky. A recent study has shown that this is also true for foreign accents: statements spoken by non-native…
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Using Charity to Increase Voluntary Payments
If a business is experimenting with voluntary pricing (‘pay-what-you-want’ pricing), to increase sales and profits give a portion of voluntary payments away to charity (and advertise the fact, naturally). That’s the conclusion from a study by researcher Ayelet Gneezy comparing a number of pricing plans involving–in various combinations–voluntary payments, fixed prices and charitable donations: At…
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Embodied Cognition and How Objects Influence Our Perceptions
The physical properties of objects we interact with can substantially influence our opinion of unrelated items and people. Through a number of novel experiments, MIT’s Joshua Ackerman has clearly shown how the texture, weight, and other physical properties of objects we touch affect our judgements and decisions (neatly summarised by Ed Yong): Weight is linked…
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An Expert’s an Expert Only When We Agree
In the face of information that is contradictory to our beliefs, not only do we reinforce our position, but we also question the credibility of the source itself. In a study showing that we only agree that there is scientific consensus if that consensus agrees with our viewpoint, researchers from the Cultural Cognition Project also…
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Corrections and When They Work
A correction only serves its purpose (to correct our falsely-held beliefs) if we are predisposed to believe the correction itself. If we disagree with the correction, however, it instead acts to actually reinforce our incorrect beliefs (the “backfire effect”). That’s the conclusion drawn from research conducted by Brendan Nyhan, looking at how we avoid cognitive…
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Mundane Decisions and Premature Deaths
Deaths in the United States resulting from “fairly mundane personal decisions” have risen from a rate of around 10% of all premature deaths a century ago to 44.5% today*. This shift suggests that by improving our decision-making abilities, we can dramatically reduce a main cause of premature death: ourselves. 44.5% of all premature deaths in…
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Web Marketing Lessons from Cialdini’s ‘Influence’
No marketer should be engaging with people online without having read Robert Cialdini’s much lauded Influence, says SEOmoz co-founder Rand Fishkin. To this end, Rand presents his Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence and Persuasion. The six main principles illustrated: Reciprocation: “The power of reciprocation relies on several conventions. The request must be “in-kind,”…