The feeling of certainty might be our default setting. We spend most of our mental life confirming our opinions, even when those opinions involve complex issues. We believe we understand […]

What’s the difference between a physician and a surgeon?  If you were sick in the Middle Ages you had three options: the church, the local healer, and the physician. A […]

Humans are an optimistic bunch. We overestimate desirable traits (humor), skills (driving) and our future states (well-being and health). Worse, we believe that we are immune to these better-than-average errors, […]

The human mind likes simplicity. It’s a complicated world, so we filter it into one cohesive and easy-to-digest worldview. This perspective is a rather unscientific one, however. When we observe […]

We imagine our view of the world like a painting from the Realism movement – rife with detail and comprehensible – but the contents of our conscious mind are more […]

The story of discovery goes something like this: the inventor investigates what he knows (the properties of stapholycocci) and uncovers something else (penicillin), which changes the world. The scientific method […]

Today Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel and Behavegoes on sale. The author is NYU Assistant Professor of Marketing Adam Alter. I came […]