Category: psychology
-
Happy Citizens are Good Citizens
By fostering happiness in our cities, towns and villages we are simultaneously cultivating inhabitants that will give more blood, donate more to charity, and generally be better citizens. That’s the conclusion from a study looking at how happy people become better citizens as a result of being happy. Happier people trust others more, and importantly,…
-
Prevention of Attainment Increases Desire, Decreases Attractiveness
Being prevented from obtaining something we desire simultaneously increases our desire for the item and decreases its eventual attractiveness. That’s the counterintuitive result from a study that shows the various surprising effects of “being jilted”. We show how being “jilted”–that is, being thwarted from obtaining a desired outcome–can concurrently increase desire to obtain the outcome,…
-
Abstraction to Increase Effort (and Spending)
When there is a medium placed between our effort and a desired outcome, we strive to maximise this medium regardless of whether or not it leads optimally to that outcome (think points or virtual currencies as a medium when attempting to obtain goods). That’s my attempt at a concise summary of the findings from a…
-
Clarifying Questions Placate Detractors
Feeling misunderstood and as if we are not being carefully listened to is a reason why conflicts can turn ugly, suggests Psychology Today‘s Professor Todd Kashdan. To prevent ugly, unpleasant arguments (and to resolve uncomfortable negotiations) we should ask simple, clarifying questions: If people show that they are curious and willing to learn more about…
-
The Body Language Resource
That “gestures come in clusters, like words in a sentence, and that they must be interpreted in the context in which you observe them” is the golden rule of understanding body language, says ‘The Book of Body Language’: a fantastically comprehensive body language resource, hosted by Westside Toastmasters. In the chapter on hand and thumb…
-
Body Language Mimicry and Hypnotism
Previously I discussed how body language mimicry increases affection by helping the mimicker see the other person as they want to be seen. Over a decade after it was conducted I’ve now read details of “the first rigorous study looking at body language mimicry” and its effects. Affectionately known as ‘the chameleon effect’, three questions were asked:…
-
How Different Cultures Define Choice
In her book The Art of Choosing, psychologist Sheena Iyengarâthe experimenter who conducted the original studies leading to the paradox of choice theoryâlooks at the cultural differences in the definition and acceptance of choice. Take a mundane question: Do you choose to brush your teeth in the morning? Or do you just do it? Can a habit…
-
Information, Not Recommendation, the Best Advice
Attempting to discover the most effective way to offer advice, researchers identified four separate types of advice: Advice for is a recommendation to pick a particular option. Advice against is a recommendation to avoid a particular option. Information supplies a piece of information that the decision maker might not know about. Decision support suggests how…
-
Our Common Navigational Mistakes
Reading how some animals are able to “instinctively solve navigational problems” that baffle us humans, I was reminded of Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, writing on the most common navigational mistakes we all make. In [a recent study] a number of subjects were asked to estimate the travel time for a northbound versus southbound bird. The majority of…
-
Evolutionary Theory of Fiction
The age of “politically charged” analyses of literature has passed and the latest phase is that of analysing fiction through the lens of evolutionary psychology, looking at how the brain processes literature. Humans can comfortably keep track of three different mental states at a time, Ms. Zunshine said. For example, the proposition “Peter said that Paul…