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 status.
THE MISCONCEPTION: If you are in a bad situation, you will do whatever you can do to escape it. THE TRUTH: If you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever...
Politicians who bring out charts and graphs tend to fail, and those who use anecdotes tend to win. Stories make sense on an emotional level, so anything that conjures fear, empathy, or pride will trum...
THE MISCONCEPTION: Some coincidences are so miraculous, they must have meaning. THE TRUTH: Coincidences are a routine part of life, even the seemingly miraculous ones. Any meaning applied to them come...
THE MISCONCEPTION: When someone is hurt, people rush to their aid. THE TRUTH: The more people who witness a person in distress, the less likely it is that any one person will help.
THE MISCONCEPTION: When you are around others, you feel as if everyone is noticing every aspect of your appearance and behavior. THE TRUTH: People devote little attention to you unless prompted to.
[If you hear a] story about how eating sausage leads to anal cancer, you will be skeptical, because it has never happened to anyone you know, and sausage, after all, is delicious.
The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.
The idea that people would be happier if they maintained a constant state of realism is a beautiful sentiment, but Taylor and Brown found just the opposite. They presented a new theory that suggested...
Catharsis THE MISCONCEPTION: Venting your anger is an effective way to reduce stress and prevent lashing out at friends and family. THE TRUTH: Venting increases aggressive behavior over time.
Decades of research into a variety of cognitive biases show you tend to see the world through thick Coke-bottle lenses forged from belief and smudged with attitudes and ideologies.
Education is as much about learning what you don’t know as it is about adding to what you do.
Even as the brain is dying, it refuses to stop generating a narrative, the scaffolding upon which it weaves cause and effect, memory and experience, feeling and cognition. Narrative is so important to...
Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music, or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions, is the way middle-class people fight one another for status. They can't out-consume one another becau...
How do you separate fantasy from reality? How can you be sure the story of your life both from long ago and minute to minute is true? There is a pleasant vindication to be found when you accept that y...
You can see the proof in an MRI scan of someone presented with political opinions that conflict with her own. The brain scans of a person shown statements that oppose her political stance show that th...
In science, you move closer to the truth by seeking evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the same method should inform your opinions as well.
In the background, while you crochet and golf and browse cat videos, science is fighting against your stupidity. No other human enterprise is fighting as hard, or at least not fighting and winning.
Men are easy to manipulate thanks to having fewer metrics by which they judge potential mates, and thus advertising has long been preying on their tendencies. Women will buy products in an attempt to...
Once people started coming up with ways to maintain larger groups, like armies, cities, and nations, humans started subdividing those groups. Dunbar’s number explains why big groups are made of smalle...
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