Tag: psychology
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Influencing Behaviour Online
Ignoring, for a moment, the rather unsound and outmoded neuroscience propounded in the introduction, these tips for extending influence online and persuading your visitors are worth a few minutes: Show ratings and reviews by other users (for action through social validation). Provide instant gratification and a quick fix. Put the most important action to be…
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Calorie Counts Don’t Affect Food Decisions
After New York City passed a law requiring many chain restaurants to post the calorific value of all food they sold on their menus (in the same size and font as the price), researchers started looking at how the posting of calorie counts affect consumer decision making and food consumption. The study’s findings, as summarised…
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Food Advertising Causes Unconscious Snacking
Food advertising does much more than influence our brand preferences; it also ‘primes’ automatic eating behaviours, contributing to overall and longer-term weight gain. This is the conclusion of a recent study into whether food advertising (of both the healthy and non-healthy kind) can trigger unconscious snacking by leading our thoughts toward hunger and food. Children…
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Resources on the Psychology of Security and Risk
Professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Ross Anderson, has compiled a comprehensive resource page on the psychology of risk and security. The resources themselves are divided into seven section, to wit: Introductory Papers Deception Security and Usability Social Attitudes to Risk Behavioural Economics of Security Miscellaneous Papers Other (Conferences, Websites/Blogs,…
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The Psychology of Terrorism
Alienation, a belief that membership of a movement offers social and psychological rewards (e.g. adventure, camaraderie, a heightened sense of identity) and the need to take action rather than just talk: three psychological traits that together create part of the profile of those most “open to terrorist recruitment and radicalization”. In addition to profiles like…
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On Meetings
Contemplating how to lead without meetings , The Washington Post asks three equally qualified people for their views on them. Daisy Wademan Dowling, executive director of leadership development at an unnamed Fortune 500 company, responded with the following: The real reason leaders end up in too many meetings? Because it’s flattering: having your presence “required”…
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The Inefficacy of Learning Styles
Learning styles, you’ve heard of them before: visual, kinaesthetic or auditory learners; left and right brainers; activists, reflectors and analysts. However learning styles are “theoretically incoherent and conceptually confused” concluded a 2004 study from the UK’s Learning and Skills Development Agency—an agency set up by the UK government to “improve the quality of post-16 education…
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Time Needed to Form a Habit
How long does it take to form a habit? By studying 96 people as they each attempt to start a new habit, the answer comes out as between 18 to 254 days, with a mean of 66. Some good news and caveats: Missing a single day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit. A…
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The New Rules of The Fold
In 1996, while discussing the importance of the inverted pyramid style of writing, usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote that “users don’t scroll”. From there the idea of The Fold as an integral part of web design came into being. But, as Nielsen himself has said, the Internet has evolved and “as users got more experience…
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What Makes Us Human: Tolerance and Cooperation
In the 1950s, Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev ran a selective breeding project to, by artificial selection, breed (incredibly cute) domesticated silver foxes. The results of this multi-decade experiment were impressive, especially given that the foxes were selected solely for their amicability toward humans: After only forty generations, the selected foxes began to display changes you (and Darwin, too) might…