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Why a looming storm makes us think we can eat all the junk food we want
The Washington Post: Milk, bread, eggs, ice-melt: These are the necessities we run out and buy when the forecast calls for a couple of inches of snow. These, we know, are the staples that will get us through any kind of inclement weather. But when a blizzard threatens to bury us in two feet of powder and make us prisoners in our own luxury studio apartments with only Netflix for company for Godknowshowlong? ... Consumer behavior experts have theories about why we respond to an impending weather disturbance by filling our carts with dark chocolate gelato and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
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Wearing a bike helmet might make you more dangerous
The Guardian: Perhaps safety helmets should carry a health warning. Wearing them, it appears, encourages dangerous risk-taking. In an extraordinary study, Dr Tim Gamble and Dr Ian Walker, from the University of Bath’s department of psychology, have shown that wearing a helmet is likely to increase sensation-seeking and make people less safe – even in situations where headgear is not required. The academics believe that their findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, call into question the effectiveness of safety advice, notably about the wearing of helmets for leisure activities such as cycling.
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You Don’t Know as Much as You Think: False Expertise
Scientific American: It is only logical to trust our instincts if we think we know a lot about a subject, right? New research suggests the opposite: self-proclaimed experts are more likely to fall victim to a phenomenon known as overclaiming, professing to know things they really do not. People overclaim for a host of reasons, including a desire to influence others' opinions—when people think they are being judged, they will try to appear smarter. Yet sometimes overclaiming is not deliberate; rather it is an honest overestimation of knowledge.
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Mental depletion complicates financial decisions for the poor
PBS: Kristen Doerer: How does being poor affect people’s financial decisions? What factors affect their decision making? Dan Ariely: Well, none of us always make the best financial decisions. One of the big lessons from behavioral economics is that we make decisions as a function of the environment that we’re in. And what is the environment that you’re in, in terms of your money? They — as in everyone — want to take it away from you. Your immediate environment is comprised of coffee shops, supermarkets, websites, apps and all kinds of things — none of which have an interest in your long-term or short-term financial well-being.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Failure of Intuition When Choosing Whether to Invest in a Single Goal or Split Resources Between Two Goals Alasdair D. F. Clarke and Amelia R. Hunt How do people respond when asked to perform two similar tasks simultaneously? In theory, if both tasks are easy, they should divide their attention and try to complete both; however, once the tasks become more demanding, they should change strategies and prioritize one task at the expense of the other. In a series of four studies, participants completed simultaneous detection (Study 1), throwing (Study 2), memory (Study 3), or reaching (Study 4) tasks.
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Why Some People Take Breakups Harder Than Others
The Atlantic: It’s a question that often plagues people after a painful break-up: What went wrong? As they work to figure out the answer, people typically create new relationship stories, analyzing the events leading up to the breakup and using them to build a cohesive narrative. In some cases, this type of storytelling can be positive, helping people to make sense of—and come to terms with—painful things that happen to them. Other times, though, the storytelling process can be a negative one, compounding pain rather than easing it.
