-
Poverty makes financial decisions harder. Behavioral economics can help
PBS: Last month, behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his team at the Center for Advanced Hindsight opened up the Common Cents Lab. Its goal is twofold: to examine how those living in poverty misspend their money and to help the poor make better financial decisions. ... Kristen Doerer: What’s new about this initiative? Dan Ariely: The important new initiative is that we’re going to go into financial institutions for the poor — the Latino community banks, the self-help bank, the federal credit unions, all types of financial institutions that serve lower, middle-income Americans — and we’re going to try to figure out what we can do to help them out.
-
Why Sports Wins and Sunshine May Lead You to Gamble
A sunny day or the fact that your favorite sports team unexpectedly won yesterday won’t improve your chances of winning the lottery and yet they might increase the likelihood that you’ll buy a ticket.
-
WHAT PERSONALITY TESTS REALLY REVEAL
Fast Company: Because the human mind is such a mystery, we gravitate toward things that aim to give us insight into our minds and the minds of others. This is why personality tests are so appealing. With a relatively small number of questions, these tests provide feedback that (we hope) predicts behavior in future situations. Of course, just because people answer a set of questions (even if those questions sound scientific), that doesn't mean that those questions are going to do a good job of predicting their actions. Most of the questionnaires given in the workplace address aspects of personality. Some of them aim to highlight core elements of personality.
-
Sometimes ‘poor little rich kids’ really are poor little rich kids
Reuters: The “affluenza” defense of Ethan Couch, a 16-year-old Texas boy who killed four pedestrians while driving drunk, has received a great deal of ridicule, much of it justified. That said, it would be foolish to allow an absurd effort to minimize one teenager’s responsibility for a horrific tragedy to obscure growing evidence that we have a significant and growing crisis on our hands. The children of the affluent are becoming increasingly troubled, reckless, and self-destructive. Perhaps we needn’t feel sorry for these “poor little rich kids.” But if we don’t do something about their problems, they will become everyone’s problems. ...
-
Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate
The New York Times: NORMALLY, I would have finished this column weeks ago. But I kept putting it off because my New Year’s resolution is to procrastinate more. I guess I owe you an explanation. Sooner or later. We think of procrastination as a curse. Over 80 percent of college students are plagued by procrastination, requiring epic all-nighters to finish papers and prepare for tests. Roughly 20 percent of adults report being chronic procrastinators. We can only guess how much higher the estimate would be if more of them got around to filling out the survey.
-
No Evidence of Seasonal Differences in Depressive Symptoms
A large-scale survey of U.S. adults provides no evidence that levels of depressive symptoms vary from season to season, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings are inconsistent with the notion of seasonal depression as a commonly occurring disorder. “In conversations with colleagues, the belief in the association of seasonal changes with depression is more-or-less taken as a given and the same belief is widespread in our culture,” says Steven LoBello, a professor of psychology at Auburn University at Montgomery and senior author on the new study.
