Category: psychology
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Near-Far Bias (Construal-Level Theory)
Robin Hanson has written much over the last few months on ‘construal-level theory‘ (also known as the near-far bias) and I’ve been slowly following along, taking notes. The theory, according to Wikipedia, “describes the relation between psychological distance and how abstract an object is represented in someone’s mind. The general idea is that the more…
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Facebookās āLikeā and Conspicuous Consumption
Wondering why we freely and often make our tastes public (specifically, our brand preferences through Facebook’s ‘Like’ mechanism), Nicolas Baumard discusses how we purchase goods to display our good taste: In a way, Facebook can be seen as a handy device to send a lot of very precise signals about your opinion and your values!…
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Competition Increases Cheating, Not Performance
By increasing the competitiveness of a task–by rewarding top performers, for example–performance levels do not improve and instead the rate of cheating increases among the worst performers. That’s what researchers discovered when they used a maze-based computer task to determine how increasing competitive pressure influences cheating and performance levels. Half the students were paid according…
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The World as the Extended Mind
That the tools and technologies we use act as extensions to our brains is nothing new: this is the extended mind theory. Indeed, last year I pointed to Carl Zimmer arguing that Google–and thus the Internet as a whole–was an extended mind. However, Scott Adams’ take on the ‘exobrain’ is simultaneously the most concise and…
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Gradual Sleep Deprivation, Obesity and Cognitive Impairment
By getting less than our required amount of sleep over an extended period of time (two weeks, for example) we are increasing our risk of obesity and impairing our cognitive abilities without even being aware of it. That’s the conclusion from a short article summarising the surprising effects of gradual sleep deprivation: Researchers [ā¦] restricted…
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Cryptic Crosswords and Face Identification
A study comparing the effects of various leisure activities on the recognition and identification of faces has concluded that eyewitnesses should not be permitted to do cryptic crossword puzzles prior to an identity parade. The study, conducted by Cardiff University’s Michael Lewis, compared logic puzzles (sudoku), crossword puzzles (both cryptic and standard) and mystery novels…
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Hypertext Comprehension and Delinkification
Deciding whether to click on links while reading material in hypertext form gives rise to an additional cognitive load and additional distractions, goes a theory championed by Steve Gillmor and Nicholas Carr. In certain circumstances this is an argument for the “delinkification” of text, they suggest, as this will hopefully bring about increased comprehension. While…
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Blood Sugar and the Depletion of Self-Control
Self-control is a finite resource, goes theĀ ego depletion theory, and through various means can be “used-up”. What, exactly, depletes and builds this resource isn’t fully known but a number of studies have shown someĀ intriguingĀ correlations with blood glucose level (explaining, possibly, the cookie self-control study). The abstract of a study by Roy Baumeister summarises the findings…
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Using Anchoring for Personal Appraisals
I believe the anchoring effect to be one of the most intriguing psychological phenomena, mainly due to its impact, ease of observation and ease of use. I’ve written much about anchoring before and find it hard to resist new studies on the topic. One recent study shows that even irrelevant anchors can be used to…
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Anchoring Our Beliefs
The psychological principle of anchoring is most commonly discussed in terms of our irrational decision making when purchasing items. However, Jonah Lehrer stresses that anchoring is more wide-ranging than this and is in fact “a fundamental flaw of human decision making”. As such, Lehrer believes that anchoring also effects our beliefs, such that our first…