David Berreby
Author, Us and Them: The Science of Identity
David Berreby is the author of "Us and Them: The Science of Identity." He has written about human behavior and other science topics for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Smithsonian, The New Republic, Nature, Discover, Vogue and many other publications. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Paris, a Science Writing Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory, a resident at Yaddo, and in 2006 was awarded the Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship for the first edition of "Us and Them." David can be found on Twitter at @davidberreby and reached by email at david [at] davidberreby [dot] com.
For some years now I’ve been involved with a small community group. It’s a shoe-string organization that depends entirely on volunteers. These curious creatures have a predictable life-cycle. It begins […]
If there’s one thing that unites the good guys in movies and TV shows, it’s a hatred of “procedure”—those legal niceties that get the bad guys out of jail and […]
At the beginning of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes made a bold but logical prediction (pdf): In the long run, humanity was solving its economic problems, so that by […]
Imagine you have a friend who, like many high-achieving people, has a goal. In the service of that goal, your friend eats very little and ends up looking like skin […]
The term “Big Data” naturally conjures up images of Big Users, like the government or Google or Costco. It’s easy to see why big enterprises crunch data to learn, for […]
Post-rationalist government—where laws and regulations conform to human psychology rather than to the notion that each individual is a logical calculator—is a hot idea these days. Next to old-school policies […]
Is denial of climate change a fringe belief, like thinking the moon landing was fake? Or is it just one current of thought in our society, which deserves respectful engagement, […]
When I was a teen-age consumer of cheap paperbacks about worlds more interesting than this one, I noticed a clear and sharp split between readers who loved SF (spaceships, time […]
How, our grandchildren will ask, did we come to marriage equality in the United States? And we’ll answer, like Hemingway’s Mike Campbell: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” We can grasp […]
As recently as a decade ago, a common middle-class American interpretation of a father in a heterosexual couple was “Mom’s assistant,” as Louis C.K. called it. Parenting was a job […]
Are smokers, non-exercisers, non-savers and other such undisciplined people acting irrationally? The conventional wisdom of our decade says yes, of course, they are. That’s why we need policies that will […]
One of the biggest misconceptions about post-rational behavioral research is that its effects on society are small. From the news you get the impression “behavioral economics” is all about changing […]
A study of U.S. Air Force drone operators has found they experience post-traumatic stress and other mental-health troubles at the same rate as pilots who are actually flying aircraft in […]
“Pay attention to that alley over there. A gorilla in a clown suit is going to come out of it in a second.” If I said that to you, and […]
Social science can be controversial, but it has established some facts beyond a reasonable doubt, which are now part of “what everybody knows.” Like the 20th century’s “great moderation” in […]
An aging man, a physician, learns he has Alzheimers. Determined to avoid the worst of it, he assembles a lethal collection of pills. As the next few years pass, the […]
The game is an example of a hot trend: The gamification of many aspects of life that used to be addressed by lectures, pamphlets, informational videos and the like.
Over at Edge.org, its impresario John Brockman poses an annual question to his assemblage of scientists, scholars, writers and other insightful people. This year’s (suggested by George Dyson), was this: […]
Why can we face up to our inconsistencies in the past but not expect more in the future?
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, […]
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 […]
Data-mongering is how Americans try to explain or control someone's actions. And yet, statistics about people in general, or about some category of people, tell you nothing certain about any one individual.
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 […]
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) […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]