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People Value Resources More Consistently When They Are Scarce
We tend to be economically irrational when it comes to choosing how we use resources like money and time but scarcity can convert us into economically rational decision makers, according to research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research from psychological science has shown that we humans make economically irrational decisions all the time, influenced by contextual factors that have no bearing on the utility or pleasure we will derive from a good or a service. We may scoff at the idea of buying a $4 hot dog from a street vendor, for example, but have no qualms about getting a $7 hot dog at a baseball game.
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The Psychological Difference Between $12.00 and $11.67
The Atlantic: Of the lunch spots near my office, the chain Le Pain Quotidien's menu always demands more of my attention than others. The reason that the menu at Le Pain Quotidien is unusual isn't because they serve open-faced sandwiches or that I'm not sure what kind of cheese Fourme d’Ambert is, but rather that their prices aren't formatted like those of other shops. Organic egg frittata costs $12.00, curried chicken salad tartine is $12.25, a large cappuccino is $5.35. In a world where most prices end with ".99", Le Pain Quotidien's prices make my brain hurt.
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Driving Under the Influence of Friends is Risky for Teens
Teen drivers are far more likely die in car accidents when they drive with friends. According to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a teen driver's risk of death per mile driven increases by 44% with one teen passenger in the car and quadruples with three or more teen passengers. As a result, many states now have laws limiting the number of passengers allowed in a car with a teen driver. Crash data has long shown that driving with peers dramatically increases the odds of fatal crashes for teens, particularly males, but researchers have been unable to pinpoint exactly why some teens’ driving behavior spins out of control in the presence of their friends.
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Transgender Kids Are Not Confused Or Pretending, Study Finds
BuzzFeed: Transgender children as young as 5 years old respond to psychological gender-association tests just as consistently as children who do not identify as trans, according to a groundbreaking study released this week by researchers at the University of Washington. “Our results support the notion that transgender children are not confused, delayed, showing gender-atypical responding, pretending, or oppositional,” says the study being published in Psychological Science.
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Power Has A Scary Effect On The Brain, According To Science
The Huffington Post: A little bit of power never hurt, right? Well, a study conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests otherwise. In this webisode of "Fig. 1," a University of California series that takes a closer look at new research and ideas, psychology professor Dacher Keltner notes that new evidence suggests power has similar effects on the frontal lobes as brain trauma. "Regions of frontal lobes that are now being called the empathy network ... they kind of help us detect other people’s pain," Keltner explains. "When you damage the empathy networks of your brain, which some people do, they become really impulsive. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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Worst coaching call ever? Hindsight bias and the Super Bowl
The Conversation: “The worst call in Super Bowl history,” read a headline in my hometown Seattle Times after Seahawks' head coach Pete Carroll seemingly threw the game away with his ill-fated decision to pass – rather than run – as the game clock expired. Actually, Carroll made two end-of-half decisions in Sunday’s Super Bowl, both questioned by the NBC announcers. The differing outcomes of the decisions – and the resulting reactions by pundits and fans – offer potent examples of a mental pitfall that has been the subject of roughly 800 psychological science publications.
