What lessons can divorced people teach married people?
a WSJ: Research shows that most divorced people identify the same top five regrets—behaviors they believe contributed to their marriage's demise and that they resolve to change next time. "Divorced individuals who step back and say, 'This is what I've done wrong and this is what I will change,' have something powerful to teach others," says Terri Orbuch, a psychologist, research professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and author of the new book "Finding Love Again:…
2 minutes
Does thinking really hard burn more calories?
bsp; The brain uses a ton of energy all the time and thinking hard probably doesn't burn all that much more fuel. Mental exhaustion often results when we have to work hard on something we don't like (the SAT) but rarely on something we do enjoy (a fun but challenging puzzle.) So feeling brain-tired may literally be "all in our heads" or it might just be the result of stress. Via Ferris Jabr at Scientific American: What the latest science…
2 minutes
When does reverse psychology work best?
bsp; Via PsyBlog: Reverse psychology works best with people who are contrary or resistant. In contrast agreeable people are likely to go along with you anyway so you don't need to use it. It's effects are increased when: The more attractive and important the option that's being restricted, the greater the psychological reactance. The greater the restriction of freedom, the greater the psychological reactance. Arbitrary threats produce high reactance because they don't make sense, which makes people more rebellious. But…
1 min read
How accurate are the experts on TV?
bsp; Political "expert" predictions are only slightly better than guesses and they perform far worse than statistical models. Oddly enough, "experts" were better at predicting events outside their area of expertise. Via Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer: In the mid-1980s, the psychologist Philip Tetlock noticed exactly this pattern among political experts of the day. Determined to make them put their proverbial money where their mouths were, Tetlock designed a remarkable test that was to unfold over twenty…
2 minutes
What makes something go viral on the internet?
bsp; Making people angry. Via Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator: In 2010, two researchers at the Wharton School looked at seven thousand articles that made it onto the New York Times Most E-mailed List. (A story from the Times is shared on Twitter once every four seconds, making the list one of the biggest media platforms on the web.) The researchers’ results confirm almost everything we see when content like the sensational ruin porn of Detroit…
2 minutes
Is it worth it to pay Kim Kardashian $10,000 to tweet about your product?
bsp; Probably not. Twitter celebrities aren't as influential as you might think. Via Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer: What we found was surprising even to us: Even though the Kim Kardashians of the world were indeed more influential than average, they were so much more expensive that they did not provide the best value for the money. Rather, it was what we called ordinary influencers, meaning individuals who exhibit average or even less-than-average influence, who often proved…
2 minutes
10 ways science explains why James Bond is so irresistible to women:
in 25K+ subscribers. No spam, ever. Enter your email here: Bond is supremely confident. This makes him sexy. It also makes him great at his job; being overconfident often gives better results than being objective and rational. (We'd all be better off moderately overconfident.) Neither men or women prefer modest guys. Bond has the personality of a trained man of action: SWAT team members differed from the average person by being extremely confident ("self-deceptive enhancement"), more emotionally stable and more…
3 minutes
Who’s better at pretending to be the other side: conservatives or liberals?
in 25K+ subscribers. No spam, ever. Enter your email here: Conservatives and moderates understand liberals better than liberals understand them. Those who identified as "very liberal" performed notably worse than anyone else. Via The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the…
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