How accurate do palm readers and psychics’ predictions need to be to fool us?
ey don't need to be accurate at all. It's not about accuracy of prediction, it's about delivery. Telling people the opposite of what their palm readings "revealed" was received just as well as the "correct" information. Via David McRaney's You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself: As he worked his way through college, another mentalist, Stanley Jaks, took Hyman aside and…
2 minutes
What type of music is the most relaxing?
ip the pop and jazz and head for the classical. Via Richard Wiseman's excellent book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute: Sky Chafin at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues at other universities examined which music best reduces blood pressure after a stressful event.7 Their work involved making people anxious by having them count down aloud from 2,397 in sets of 13, i.e., 2397, 2384, et cetera. To make matters worse, every thirty seconds the experimenter…
1 min read
Is very confident not confident enough?
ing overconfident often gives better results than being objective and rational: This paper suggests a potential rationale for the recent empirical finding that overconfident agents tend to self-select into more competitive environments (e.g. Dohmen and Falk, forthcoming). In particular, it shows that moderate overconfidence in a contest can improve the agent’s performance relative to an unbiased opponent and can even lead to an advantage for the overconfident agent in absolute terms. Source: "Overconfidence Can Improve an Agent’s Relative and Absolute…
1 min read
In what ways does dealing with adversity change your personality?
doesn't. Via Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom: People often say that they have been profoundly changed by adversity, yet researchers have so far collected little evidence of adversity-induced personality change beyond such reports. People’s scores on personality tests are fairly stable over the course of a few years, even for people who report that they have changed a great deal in the interim. In one of the few studies that tried to verify…
1 min read
What really gives away a liar?
n't look for signs of stress, look for indicators that the person is thinking hard. Via Richard Wiseman's excellent book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute: So what really gives away a liar? Although lying does not always make people stressed, it usually taxes their minds. Lying involves having to think about what other people already know or could find out, what is plausible, and what fits in with what you have said before. Because of this, liars…
2 minutes
What are we most likely to regret?
st often we regret not doing something. We regret not working harder in school, not taking advantage of opportunities and not spending more time with friends and family. Via Richard Wiseman's excellent book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute: About 75 percent of respondents regret not doing something, with the top three slots taken by studying hard enough at school, not taking advantage of an important opportunity, and not spending enough time with friends and family. In contrast,…
1 min read
Is there a scent that can make you smarter?
bsp; Rosemary. Via Eurekalert: Hailed since ancient times for its medicinal properties, we still have a lot to learn about the effects of rosemary. Now researchers writing in Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, published by SAGE, have shown for the first time that blood levels of a rosemary oil component correlate with improved cognitive performance. And: The investigators tested cognitive performance and mood in a cohort of 20 subjects, who were exposed to varying levels of the rosemary aroma. Using blood…
1 min read
Are cars with bumper stickers dangerous?
eir drivers are. Via Richard Wiseman's excellent book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute: ...people who personalize their car by adding bumper stickers or window stickers may be sending out powerful signals of territoriality, and they were curious to discover if having to share public roads with others could increase the chances of these drivers’ experiencing road rage. To investigate, hundreds of participants were asked to report how many bumper and window stickers they had and also to…
1 min read
