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Posts Tagged ‘psychology’

The Parent Trap: Addiction

Shankar Vedantam of Slate hypothesizes that people continue to procreate, despite overwhelming evidence that parenting isn’t very fun, for much the same reason that cocaine users can’t quit: they’re addicts.



Exploring the Trust-Prosperity Link

The Big Think profiles Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist and Freakonomics guest blogger whose research has focused primarily on oxytocin, a chemical that’s “critical to creating and sustaining trust among people.” Zak has even explored the relationship between trust and national prosperity.



The Myth of Multitasking

If you think your multitasking skills are improving your productivity, think again. Consistent with other multitasking research, a new working paper (ungated version) by Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino and Nicola Persico analyzes a sample of Italian judges with different caseloads and finds that “task juggling, i.e., the spreading of effort across too many active projects, decreases the performance of workers, raising the chances of low throughput, long duration of projects and exploding backlogs.”



Are We Social Even in the Womb?

Humans are social creatures, or so the psychologists tell us. But when does that social behavior start? Is it biological or cultural?



The Menstrual Theory of Impulse Buying

Recent research on willpower suggests that it’s a limited resource that can be depleted. Now there’s evidence that something else affects willpower: women’s menstrual cycles.



What Can Procrastination Teach You?

Seems that nearly everyone – even Nobel prize-winning economists who perhaps should know better – procrastinates. As James Surowiecki writes in The New Yorker, procrastination may well be a basic human impulse.




What I've Been Thinking About

A few weeks back, I sat down with the Richmond Fed’s Aaron Steelman for a most enjoyable hour or two talking about my recent research projects and perspectives on economics generally. If you’re interested in learning more, click here for the full interview. Regular readers of this blog may even recognize a few themes that I’ve been hammering away at here on these pages. At the risk of quoting myself, here are a few favorite parts.



Got a Plan? Best to Keep it Quiet…

Announcing your goals – a common commitment device – may actually make you less likely to accomplish them, according to a new TED talk from music entrepreneur Derek Sivers.



Not as Irrational as We Think?

New research helps explain anomalies like the gambler’s fallacy and other irrational human behavior patterns. Researchers found that many “irrational” decisions are made because of erroneous beliefs.



How Panhandlers Spend Money

A reporter for the Canadian newspaper The Star handed out five pre-paid credit cards to panhandlers, asked the panhandlers to return the card when finished, and tracked their purchases.



Grumpy Old Men?

New research indicates that older people are “more likely to choose to read negative articles about those younger than themselves. They also tended to show less interest in articles about older people, whether negative or positive.”



Drunk or Sober? Harder to Tell Than You Think

A new literature review, summarized in the BPS Research Digest, concludes that “the vast majority of studies find that lay people, police officers and bartenders are in fact hopeless at distinguishing a drunk person from a sober one, at least at moderate levels of intoxication.”




The Difference Between Americans and Humans?

The academic psychologist Joseph Henrich brought the Ultimatum game to the Amazon jungle, and found that the Maschiguenga people of southeastern Peru make decisions like economists.




The Value of a Tattoo in Higher Education

Levitt’s skepticism notwithstanding, it seems there may be a good reason for some people to get tattoos. David B. Wiseman, a psychologist, showed 128 undergraduate students photographs of tattooed and non-tattooed female models, described as “college instructors.” He found that college students prefer tattoos.



Human/Capuchin Parallels Revisited

What’s the most embarrassing thing about human decision-making? It’s not that we make cognitive mistakes, says Yale cognitive psychologist Laurie Santos, in this recent TED talk. It’s that we seem doomed by our biology to make the same predictable mistakes over and over.



Dogs for Everyone?

New research shows that, in addition to being man’s best friend, dogs improve productivity in the office.



How Culture Influences Decision-Making

What kid doesn’t hate it when Mom makes them put on a sweater? Apparently, Anglo-American children hate it so much that they perform worse on any task they believe was chosen for them by their mothers.



When Crowds Panic

The recent deaths at the annual Love Parade music festival in Duisburg, Germany, can be counted among the most perplexing form of tragedy: one that unfolds entirely as a result of the normal psychology of healthy human beings. When crowds reach a critical density, they automatically become vulnerable to a contagion of blind fear that overwhelms any attempt at rational behavior. The paradox of terror is that the subconscious fear response, which evolved over millions of years to keep us safe, can itself pose a terrible danger in the 21st century.




A Clue to Referee Bias?

The BPS Research Digest reports that “[a] simple perceptual bias could influence football referees’ judgments about whether a foul occurred or not.”



The United Mistakes of America

Kathryn Schulz, the author of Being Wrong, has been guest-blogging for us about being wrong – and admitting our mistakes. Her latest post examines the historical culture of error in the United States.