Today marks my last blog for Artful Choice. It has been an exciting year of writing about decisions small and big and the forces that help shape them and make […]
From an evolutionary perspective, our quickness to judge faces certainly makes sense. We need to know if someone is friend or foe, if he is strong or weak, if we can trust him or not. And we need to know quickly, before something bad happens. But is that quickness still as good when it determines national political outcomes?
The crowd surges around you, lurching forward in one overpowering swell. There’s panting and shoving, sharp elbows and raised voices, clawing and tearing, frenzied looks and frazzled nerves. Light blaring […]
Can we be aware without actually paying attention? In other words, can our brains somehow imbibe visual information from the outside world without any conscious effort on our part? It […]
It is remarkably easy to report false-positive findings, or results that support an effect that, in reality, does not (or may not) exist.
The way our brains act, it seems, is sensitive to the way we, their owners, think, from something as concrete to learning, the subject of the current study, to something as theoretical as free will.
As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming […]
In most circumstances, narcissism doesn’t go over well. But there’s one big exception to the rule: leadership.
This past Saturday, October 15th, marked a momentous occasion in the history of cleanliness: the fourth annual Global Handwashing Day. Yes, it exists. Established by the Global Public Private Partnership […]
Today, I don’t want to write about Kahneman’s work or his invaluable contribution to the study of decision making and the workings of the human mind, but rather, about something much more general: his approach to research.
When we habituate to something, our physical and psychological response becomes so used to it that whatever the “it” is stops being arousing.
Today, another Ig-Nobel Prize installment, this time from the actual winner in Psychology, Karl Halvor Teigen. The question: why do we sigh? Is a sigh, as that all-time greatest song […]
We become high achievers by working on something important—all the while procrastinating doing something even more important.
Being a chameleon is good only if your colors are changing in the right direction.
Recently, while working on a piece about memory and smell, I came upon a concept that I’d never before heard about: blind smell. I’d read often enough about blindsight, the […]
Can the mind influence the brain?
Touch has always played an important role in our development and in our tendency to make certain judgments and take certain risks.
When we remember, what is it that we’re remembering? Do we try to recapture the appearance of a moment, like a photograph or a postcard that shows us a perfect […]
One of my favorite movies is When Harry Met Sally. I can watch it over and over and love it every single time—maybe even more than I did before. There’s […]
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes fans: a new installment of the series is now available at Scientific American, here. I will not be posting any more series updates on this blog, but you […]
