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You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think
Scientific American: Most people believe that they are above average, a statistical impossibility. The above average effects, as they are called, are common. For example, 93 percent of drivers rate themselves as better than the median driver. Of college professors, 94 percent say that they do above-average work. People are unrealistically optimistic about their own health risks compared with those of other people. For example, people think that they are less susceptible to the flu than others. Stock pickers think the stocks they buy are more likely to end up winners than those of the average investor.
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Do shoppers feel guilty about Bangladesh?
USA Today: The hottest date at the global retail real estate conference that starts Sunday in Las Vegas is Uniqlo. That's because Uniqlo is one of the three "big hitters" in retail right now, says Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of Douglas Elliman Real Estate's retail group, along with Sweden-based chain H&M and British brand Topshop. That has dozens of mall executives trying to get a meeting with the expanding Japan-based low-price clothing retailer, she says. ... Abby Armbruster, 25, says she would pay extra for fair trade clothing, but it's not a factor in her choices. "I'm sad to say that I don't pay attention to where my clothes are made," says Armbruster of Wooster, Ohio.
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Uncommon Sense: Toward an RQ Test?
The Huffington Post: We all know people who are highly intelligent but not very smart. These people get good grades in school, ace a lot of tests, and often succeed professionally. But they nevertheless hold irrational beliefs and do a lot of foolish things. Such people almost certainly have high IQs, but IQ scores do not reflect their particular form of cognitive deficit. Indeed, these people seem to be unable to think and act rationally despite their high intelligence. University of Toronto psychological scientist Keith Stanovich has a name for this disability. He calls it "dysrationalia," and he has spent the last several years trying to define the nature of this common deficit.
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Why You Like What You Like
Smithsonian Magazine: For most of us, a pickle is a pickle. It is something that rests snugly beside a sandwich, or floats in a jar on a deli counter. It is rarely something that occasions cryptographic analysis. A number of years ago, though, Howard Moskowitz, a Harvard-trained psychophysicist and food industry consultant, was asked by Vlasic Pickles to crack “the pickle code.” Losing market share to Claussen, the Vlasic executives wanted to take a hard look at a question that was, surprisingly, rarely asked: What kind of pickles did people really want?
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How Our Brains Miss the Obvious
Discovery News: In the house of alleged Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro, multiple padlocks kept interior doors shut, windows were nailed shut, and guests weren't allowed upstairs or in the basement. In retrospect, some question why visitors didn't notice that something was amiss over the 10 years that three women were allegedly held captive there before their recent escape. But psychologists say few people would: We are so focused on the task on hand that it's easy to miss aberrant details.
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When paying more stops paying off
The Washington Post: Everyone likes money. Ask people who say they don’t care about money if they’ve ever turned down a raise. Wait for the awkward pause. But money is funny, too. However much it can motivate people to work harder and better, it also has curious—and sometimes counterproductive—effects on their performance. A growing body of research shows that, in some cases, paying people more not only fails to change their behavior but actually makes them perform even worse. Money can be a surprisingly poor incentive.
