Aug. 18 2010

Weekend Essay by Jonah Lehrer: How Power Affects Us

Perhaps the corner office could use a few more windows.

Mar. 30 2010

The psychologist Ellen Langer once had subjects engage in a betting game against either a self-assured, well-dressed opponent or a shy and badly dressed opponent (in Langers delightful phrasing, the dapper or the schnook condition), and she found that her subjects bet far more aggressively when they played against the schnook. They looked at their awkward opponent and thought, Im better than he is. Yet the game was pure chance: all the players did was draw cards at random from a deck, and see who had the high hand.
The psychology of overconfidence : The New Yorker (via slantback)

May. 27 2009

The Real Time Web is a Beautiful Distraction

syntheticpubes:

These media play off of a very real psychological factor known as operant conditioning, the addictive need to return over and over in hopes of a reward.

The ability to pay attention, focus and strategically disconnect will be a winning discipline of the next generation.

yup. 

Apr. 28 2009

slantback:

Mom might actually be happier with a shorter-lived gift card, new social-science research suggests, because she’d be more likely to use it. Paradoxically, people don’t put off only unpleasant tasks like doing taxes or cleaning out the garage. They also procrastinate on enjoyable experiences like going to the spa. Tight deadlines can force people not only to get work done (or to make that Mother’s Day phone call) but to have fun as well. (via The Gift-Card Economy - The Atlantic (May 2009) )

sometimes it’s amazing to me how simple structures dictate and touch so many parts of our lives.

Apr. 14 2009

Marketplace: Why you want to cheat on your taxes

a good look at basic behavioral economics.

i’ve enjoyed the luxury of two members in my immediate family being world-class accountants but finally filing on my own this year, from start to finish, was a much more satisfying experience.

Apr. 06 2009

Elastic Happiness - Anil Dash

I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to extrapolate on the political impacts we’ll see from a generation growing up seeing elastic artificial intelligence as an important part of keeping harmony in a community of people playing the same game.

Apr. 05 2009

Al Zacharia, apartment broker extraordinaire

marco:

I wasn’t just paying him for 30 minutes of his time — I was saving weeks of mine.

classic argument.  i’m very much a fan of this.  i have no problem paying for something that gives me exactly what i want and need.  isn’t that why currency exists in the first place?  it’s your fault if you don’t use it to maximize the one thing you can never get more of:  time.

recently - everything, in my head, is coming back to a few key words:  authority, direction, curation, editing and value.

too many people are missing the point that amazing value might come in a package that, quite simply, saves me time.

Dec. 12 2008

Questions for Jonah Lehrer

Maybe indecisiveness is the price of being an intelligent human being who understands that actions have consequences.

That would be a little too self-congratulatory for me. Indecisiveness means you’re not listening carefully enough to your emotions, which know what you really want and could be whispering, “Go for the Honey Nut Cheerios.”

Nov. 29 2008

Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit: Scientific American

jackcheng:

Long article, but here’s an interesting bit: “The “arousal procrastinator” swears that he works best under pressure, loving—perhaps needing—the rush of a last-minute deadline to get started. Such a person believes procrastinating affords a “peak” or “flow” experience, defined by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi of the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University as being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. Time disappears. The ego dissolves.

But procrastination does not facilitate flow, according to social scientist Eunju Lee of Halla University in South Korea. In 2005 Lee reported surveying 262 students and finding that procrastinators tended to have fewer, not more, flow experiences. After all, a person must be able to let go of herself to “get lost” in an experience, and procrastinators are generally self-conscious individuals who have trouble doing that.”

hmm.

Nov. 22 2008

ratcliffe-lee:

A Theory of Human Motivation by psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote in his paper in 1943, explains why our digital world is driven by non-digital elements, for every word written and spoken has pretext and motive behind it.