Content tagged psychology
Blog Entries
The psychology of house pricing. According to one realtor, a price like $433,779 “would be a real turnoff ... you’re talking about someone who’s … gulfstream/2236
“Her Evite reply had to indicate she was glad to have been invited. It had to illustrate she had good reason for not attending. Most of all, it had to … gulfstream/2201
Review of The Two Towers: [Gollum] gives the movie a chance for psychological inquiry—the one thing it doesn’t require. “The Lord of … gulfstream/993
Really gripping: 999 (i.e. emergency services) transcripts. “All right, well done. How old is your mum?” “Um, I don’t know. She’s just like … gulfstream/2557
Malcolm Gladwell, curiously covering much the same ground that another New Yorker writer (Brendan Gill) did in his book Late Bloomers. gulfstream/2536
“In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse … gulfstream/2643
Paul Graham on Hacker News, and building community on news aggregation sites: “The most dangerous thing for the frontpage is stuff that’s too easy … gulfstream/2589
delicious
How to Minimize Politics in Your Company // ben's blog
High-level office politics (CXO level), and how to deal with it.
How we buy plane tickets and why it's ruining air travel - FlightCaster
Why Online Dating Is So Unsatisfying | Dan Ariely | Big Think
"I think that online dating is an incredibly unsatisfying experience. In fact, when we do surveys to understand what people do, the basic trade off is for each six hours of searching for people and emailing them, you get one cup of coffee. And it's not as if people enjoy online dating, it's not as if they have fun searching people and writing blurbs for them. I mean, imagine that you basically had to drive six hours, three hours each way to have coffee with somebody, and, you know, coffee usually ends up with just coffee. It's an incredibly unsatisfying experience. So I think it's a really bad, it's a really bad system."
What's the middle ground between "F.U!" and "Welcome!"? | Ask MetaFilter
Answer to a question asking how to say no to someone asking to stay over a few nights at one's house: "This is a classic case of Ask Culture meets Guess Culture. In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture. In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes."
Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets - July 2009 - Armed Forces Journal - Military Strategy, Global Defense Strategy
"Compounding the problem, the briefer often reads these slides aloud while the audience is trying to read the other information on the slide. Since most people read at least twice as fast as most people can talk, he is wasting half of his listeners’ time and simultaneously reducing comprehension of the material." Thoughtful piece on PowerPoint--the author dislikes them, particular when they form part of "decision briefs," not "information briefs." (I think most tech uses of slides are essentially "information briefs.")
How Visa Predicts Divorce - The Daily Beast
"And with its “Total Rewards” card, Harrah’s casinos track everything that players win and lose, in real time, and then analyze their demographic information to calculate their “pain point”—the maximum amount of money they’re likely to be willing to lose and still come back to the casino in the future. Players who get too close to their pain point are likely to be offered a free dinner that gets them off the casino floor."
Fogonazos: "No es una ilusión óptica, es que tu cerebro falla"
The Economics of Pinball « Cheap Talk
"Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free."
Why Wine Ratings Are Badly Flawed - WSJ.com
"The judges' wine ratings typically varied by ±4 points on a standard ratings scale running from 80 to 100. A wine rated 91 on one tasting would often be rated an 87 or 95 on the next. Some of the judges did much worse, and only about one in 10 regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points."
Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message « OkTrends
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive « alex.moskalyuk
no sources, often contradictory
Op-Ed Columnist - Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal - NYTimes.com
"One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust." hrm maybe.
Six Tips for Introverted Travelers - Features - World Hum
Confessions of an Introverted Traveler - Features - World Hum
Lessons In Survival | Print Article | Newsweek.com
sounds a lot like waterboarding, actually: "During this testing, a lot of sailors black out. They simply don't get enough oxygen and lose consciousness. Morgan has watched many of them sink to the bottom of the pool before divers pull them to the surface. On the deck, the unconscious sailors are rolled on their sides, and as soon as they revive, an instructor shouts again and again: "Are you gonna quit? Are you gonna quit?" Sailors are given 30 seconds to answer or they're kicked out of the program. If they say they want to keep going, they're given another 30 seconds to recover and then they're thrown back into the pool."
Why money messes with your mind - science-in-society - 18 March 2009 - New Scientist
list of some of the ways in which we're irrational about money: more concerned about a different of $10 in buying a meal than in buying a house, for example. (i suspect that part of this is due to necessity ... it's somewhat true that if you look after pennies, the pounds look after themselves ... buy only somewhat.)
Preoccupations - Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time - NYTimes.com
"This doesn’t mean we should always avoid face-to-face meetings — but it is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones."
Hikikomori - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"individuals who refuse to leave their parents' house, and isolate themselves from society in their homes for a period exceeding six months"
The eyeballing game
eyeball right angles, etc.
Brendan O’Connor’s Blog - AI and Social Science » Moral psychology on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm
on memory, and an eccentric pole who created some software to help you remember
Confessions of a Car Salesman
nice, long, article by undercover car salesman