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Human behavior in a post-rational world
Kids do the darnedest things. For instance, one time late at night, when I was 9 or 10, I opened the drawer in the kitchen, took out the biggest knife, and lightly pressed its point into my chest. I hadn't done some homework assignment and I was thinking that maybe I would just kill myself. I ...
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Trial lawyers who advise male defendants to dress in dark suits and white shirts might think twice about that notion after a look at this study, soon to appear in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The experimenters found that people asked to weigh moral dilemmas that were printed in a ...
How tall are people, as a rule? If you tried to answer that question by interviewing a seven-foot-tall man, you'd be making a grave mistake. Most any educated person can tell you that a single individual's case won't tell you what to expect about people in general, or people in the same category as ...
Over at Atlantic Wire, Evan Selinger is wondering about a potential downside to augmented reality technology: What if people want to tune augmented-reality tech to their prejudices? Specifically, he imagines a little old lady (OK, his grandmother) tuning her personal Head's Up Display to filter ...
In the wake of the awful events in Newtown, a "national conversation" seems to have started about both easy access to guns and the ways we deal (or don't deal) with mental illness. Naturally their focus is on how to prevent another one of these mass killings. If it's to accomplish much, though ...
One consequence of mass killings like this week's horror in Newtown, according to reporting by Kristina Fiore, is this: Involuntary commitments of mentally ill men will increase for a while. To which I can only say: Terrific. I hope they triple. Yes, it's obvious that we need to reduce unstable men ...
Ever feel sorry for a sidewalk sparrow with a cigarette butt in its beak? Did you sigh in wistful sadness at seeing nature's beauty polluted by human industry, which turns all loveliness to grime? Or try to fight off the weltschmerz with gallows humor? Well, cut it out. Seriously. Wipe that smug ...
I'm convinced that human beings are far less rational, coherent, consistent and aware in their daily decisions than they are supposed to be. This means we're out of synch with the founding assumptions of our markets, electoral systems and other important institutions. But this doesn't mean I want ...
A year ago Mike Konczal noticed something stunning about the stories on the We Are the 99% Tumblr: The people in them don't sound like late 20th century consumers who just want more stuff, nor like early 20th-century union organizers in quest of decent wages and work conditions. Instead, they sound ...
Who won big in last night's election? Data. Cold, hard data and the analytical tools to interpret it. The Obama campaign won by leveraging unbelievably detailed information about voters, as Michael Scherer describes today. And those observers who did best at predicting what voters would do (like ...
How much infrastructure and training do children need to use a laptop or a tablet? Do they need, for example, schools and teachers? Do they need to have seen computers in a movie or picture, if not in person? Do they need to know how to read? In one recent experiment, the answer to all these ...
Imagine you are a scientist who has just received the latest issue of the most important journal in your field. As you look through the papers published there, you'll probably recognize some names (hey, it's Boris from grad school, good for him), and maybe glean an idea or two for your own work ...
Praised by politicians from Paul Ryan to Barack Obama, hailed by pundits as the root of all virtue and success, self-control is almost as popular this election cycle as Motherhood. In the prosperous 60s people talked about letting go and loosening up, and in the rich 90s we were more concerned with ...
Years ago, when I was a young reporter working for a New England newspaper, I was told, more than once, that our city editor had "the personality of a door knob." This was meant as a compliment. Being colorless was a virtue, a sign of trustworthiness. We reporters were supposed to be quiet and ...
Shakespeare's Caius Martius Coriolanus isn't really suited to politics, but his family and friends urge him on, and so he makes a game effort at putting up with the smelly common people and their ridiculous electoral rituals, hiding his contempt. His tragedy hinges on the moment when he cracks and ...