-
How designers keep you calm in long queues (it sometimes involves elephants)
Four million tourists flock to the Empire State Building’s world-famous observatory each year to get a glimpse of Manhattan’s landscape. Before they get to the view, however, they often have to contend with more than an hour of waiting in a labyrinth of queues. “We had two things to offer before: the line and the view,” admits Anthony E. Malkin, CEO of the Empire State Realty Trust. The notoriously long queues have frustrated time-crunched tourists and created a logjam at the Empire State’s office building lobbies. Speaking at the opening of a new visitor entrance yesterday, Malkin explained how he turned to a team of designers and architects to fix the problem.
-
The trick to learning when to cut your losses
You’ve popped down the shops to pick up some milk. Halfway there you remember that this particular shop is actually closed on Sunday afternoons. And as far as you know, there are no others open nearby. Still, you’ve already spent 10 minutes walking in that direction, so you might as well at least finish your journey, right? Unless you were already desperate to stretch your legs, this is a transparently stupid way of thinking. Yet, bizarrely, this illogical cognitive pattern is widespread in decision-making; often, involving choices with far higher stakes. A gambler might call it chasing your losses. The British saying – ‘don’t throw good money after bad’ – captures a similar sentiment.
-
Imaginary Worlds of Childhood
In 19th-century England, the Brontë children created Gondal, an imaginary kingdom full of melodrama and intrigue. Emily and Charlotte Brontë grew up to write the great novels “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre.” The fictional land of Narnia, chronicled by C.S. Lewis in a series of classic 20th-century novels, grew out of Boxen, an imaginary kingdom that Lewis shared with his brother when they were children.
-
‘This Is How Rats Work.’ Why Twitter’s Emphasis on Follower Counts Could Be Backfiring
Online follower counts have become a fashionable form of currency, numbers people use as evidence of personal and professional clout. Media outlets treat it as news when celebrities amass big followings, and an entire industry has ascended around “influencers” who endorse goods via popular feeds. It’s a metric increasingly ingrained in modern life. It’s also under the microscope at Twitter. CEO Jack Dorsey has expressed a willingness to rethink not just policies but the platform’s fundamental design as Twitter continues to grapple with issues ranging from hate speech to disinformation campaigns.
-
Toddlers Like Winners, But How They Win Matters
Everybody loves a winner — even toddlers, according to a study published Monday. But even though kiddos tend to like high-status individuals, they don't like those who win conflicts by using force. "It seems like toddlers care about who wins, but they also care about how they win," says Ashley Thomas, now a researcher in cognitive development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. In recent years, scientists have devised experiments to show that babies and young toddlers not only notice the social interactions happening around them, but also actively evaluate them.
-
How to Help Teenagers Embrace Stress
Now that the school year is in full swing, many young people are feeling the weight of academic demands. But how much strain students experience may depend less on their workloads and more on how they think about the very nature of stress. Stress doesn’t deserve its bad rap. Psychologists agree that while chronic or traumatic stress can be toxic, garden-variety stress — such as the kind that comes with taking a big test — is typically a normal and healthy part of life. In a 2013 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on stress mind-sets, the researchers Alia J.
