Tag: psychology
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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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The Presence of Books and Children’s Intelligence
The number of books in your household has more of an effect on your child’s academic achievements than your education or income, a recently published study (pdf) has found. Suggesting that the effects seem to be far from trivial, the conclusion indicates that simply the presence of books in their house can make children more…
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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…
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Predicting Our Behaviour
Other people are far superior than us at predicting our behaviour as their predictions are based primarily on observation and are not tainted by our psychological narrative. After reading Timothy Wilson’sĀ Strangers to Ourselves, Nick Southgate–faculty member at London’s The School of Life–discusses this idea thatĀ our friends and acquaintances are better than us at predicting our…
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Conformity and Its Influences
There are ten “timeless influencers” of conformity, suggests the literature on the topic, and by understanding what these influences are–and how to use and counteract them–we are provided with some insight into our and others’ behaviour in many situations. To that end, PsyBlog helpfully provides a summary of the ten core factors that influence conformity.…
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Perceived Freedom Threats and Our Reactions
PerceivedĀ threats to our behavioural freedom or autonomy–even inconsequential and trivial threats–provoke instinctive and often unusual reactions. This reactance, as it is known, must be considered in a business context (and is often completely ignored), argues Andrew O’Connell inĀ Harvard Business Review, noting the many unexpected ways we react to perceived freedom and autonomy threats. What’s amazing…
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Task Perception (Serious vs. Fun) and Performance
When a task is described as being a serious test of skill or proficiency, high achievers perform significantly better on the task than low achievers (as one would predict). When the same task is described as ‘fun’, however, the opposite is seen: low achievers outperform high achievers. Obviously, how we perceive tasks (or describe them…
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Vowel Sounds and Price Perceptions
How the vowels in words are pronounced has an influence on how we perceive the size of an item. This ‘phonetic symbolism’ has also been shown to effect how we perceive prices: Researchers have known for 80 years about a symbolic connection between speech and size: back-of-the-mouth vowels like the “o” in “two” make people…
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Scientifically-Proven Ways to Improve Creativity
Fourteen acts or mindsets that have been shown–using science!–to increase creativity, from a two-article series on scientifically-proven methods toĀ increase your creativity: Psychological distance: Imagine your creative task as distant and disconnected from your current location. Chronological distance: Project yourself or the task forward in time. Absurdist stimulation: Read some Kafka: absurdity is a ‘meaning threat’,…