The next time you get a pimple on your forehead, or buy a new pair of shoes, or Tweet about how boring your day is, don’t expect anyone to notice. You are not so smart or special.
If you neglect your personal space and allow chaos and clutter to creep in, it will affect you, and perhaps encourage further neglect. Positive feedback loops should improve your life, not detract fro...
You are a liar by default, and you lie most to yourself. If you fail, you forget it. If you win, you tell everyone.
Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned he...
Subjective Validation THE MISCONCEPTION: You are skeptical of generalities. THE TRUTH: You are prone to believing vague statements and predictions are true, especially if they are positive and address...
The researchers discovered that money is indeed a major factor in day-to-day happiness. No surprise there. You need to make a certain amount, on average, to be able to afford food, shelter, clothing,...
The psychologist Jonathan Haidt says many people who don’t consciously believe in karma still believe deep down in some version of it, calling it whatever seems appropriate in their own culture. They...
A long day of dealing with bullshit often leads to an evening of no-decision television ...
THE TRUTH: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others.
Selling Out THE MISCONCEPTION: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising. THE TRUTH: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for s...
When the third person effect leads you to condone censorship, take a step back and imagine the sort of messages people on the other side might think are brainwashing you, and then ask yourself if thos...
Besides death, your destiny is not inescapable.
Believing you understand your motivations and desires, your likes and dislikes, is called the introspection illusion. You believe you know yourself and why you are the way you are. You believe this kn...
You see people who speak slowly as being less intelligent—slow.
It is not a fallacy to trust the consensus of thousands of researchers on how to interpret the evidence provided by decades of studies.
Baumeister and his group wrote in the social-exclusion paper that being part of society means accepting a bargain between you and others. If you will self-regulate and not be selfish, then you get to...
So, how about spanking? After reading all this, do you think you are ready to know what science has to say about the issue? Here's the skinny: Psychologists are still studying the matter, but the curr...
One of the best things about owning a brain is how you often seem to phase out of normalcy and briefly see your culture with a weirdly objective frame of mind. At some point every child realizes money...
You are the same as an insect, just with a more complex nervous system responding to stimuli with a wider array of denser behavioral routines that only appear to give rise to consciousness.
Remember this study when you are in a negotiation—make your initial request far too high. You have to start somewhere, and your initial decision or calculation greatly influences all the choices that...
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