Jonah Lehrer on our context-dependent personalities:
if personality is so context-dependent, then why do we believe so fiercely in the constancy of character? Why does everyone know their Myers-Briggs score? The answer returns us to the biased brain, and a mental flaw known as the fundamental attribution error. It turns out that when we evaluate the behavior of others we naturally overemphasize the role of personality - we assume people are always aggressive or always dishonest or always sarcastic - and undervalue the role of…
1 min read
Real-time pricing error alerts for consumers to pounce on:
al-time price search has arrived, and with it some unexpected bonus features for consumers. German site Apnoti claims to have the first search engine to index prices for the German, American and French markets in real time. Currently in beta launch, the engine crawls over 65 million items in more than 10,000 affiliated stores for each and every search request, presenting users with a comparison of products' price trends over the past four weeks and current prices, accurate (in theory)…
2 minutes
Do we prefer the things we see first, see last or the ones in the middle?
in over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
When is the best month of the year to buy NFL tickets?:
cember... NFL teams play only sixteen regular-season games -- eight at home and eight on the road -- compared to professional baseball and baketball teams, which play 162 and 82 regular-season games per season, respectively. Typically, at least half of the NFL teams will have losing records by December and little shot of making the playoffs, so fewer people want to see them play, and this waning demand increases your chances of scoring tickets. This is from Mark Di Vincenzo's…
1 min read
Scientific American – Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn:
ople remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications…
1 min read
Garett Jones on low wage jobs, cell phones and economics:
w much have cell phones pushed down the cash wages of tedious jobs? Labor supply increase: parking attendant, janitor, better jobs now. via twitter.com Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
Attractive people are more trusting when they think they can be seen:
tractive people are more trusting when they think they can be seen: Here, we tested the effects of cues of observation on trusting behavior in a two-player Trust game and the extent to which these effects are qualified by participants’ own attractiveness. Although explicit cues of being observed (i.e., when participants were informed that the other player would see their face) tended to increase trusting behavior, this effect was qualified by the participants’ other-rated attractiveness (estimated from third-party ratings of…
1 min read
The Economist – National wealth and holiday entitlement:
RIKING the right balance between life and work can be tricky. Employees in European countries tend to have a better deal than most, enjoying more days off work than their counterparts in Asia or America. Workers in Finland, France and Brazil have the most generous statutory allowance, getting 30 days of holiday every year. Americans work longer hours: theirs is the only rich country that does not give any statutory paid holiday. (In practice, most workers get around 15 days…
1 min read
