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This classic thought experiment explains the weird decisions we make about spending money
Quartz: Some years ago, I interviewed the Nobel prize-winning psychologist and bestselling author Daniel Kahneman. He told me one of his all-time favorite thought experiments, which is something of a classic in behavioral economics. It involves a woman who has spent $160 on two theatre tickets. She is looking forward to the show, but when she arrives at the theatre she can’t find the tickets. She empties out her bag. She goes through her pockets. No sign of them. She feels slightly sick as she thinks of the large sum of money she’s wasted. But what about the show? Will she spend another $160 on replacement tickets, or will she just give up and go home? Read the whole story: Quartz
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How to cope with loneliness
The Guardian: Loneliness is everywhere in the world of psychology these days – the subject of so many studies, articles and talks that you sometimes wish the loneliness researchers would go away, so you could just get some damn time to yourself. Perhaps you knew that loneliness can be lethal: it’s linked to heart disease, insomnia and depression, and is a better predictor than obesity of an early death. But the new spin on loneliness is that we ought to welcome it, in modest doses. “As long as we then do what we should do – reconnect with people – then loneliness is a good thing,” the German psychologist Maike Luhmann told the US website Vox.
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Can a divided America heal?
TED: How can the US recover after the negative, partisan presidential election of 2016? Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the morals that form the basis of our political choices. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, he describes the patterns of thinking and historical causes that have led to such sharp divisions in America — and provides a vision for how the country might move forward. Listen to the whole story: TED
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Preschoolers’ Expectations Shape How They Interpret Speech
When someone misspeaks or forgets a word, we use our past experience with language to hear what we expect them to say — research suggests 4- and 5-year-old children show this adaptive ability to the same degree that adults do.
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Cultivating Employee Curiosity is Good for Business
New research suggests that a strong sense of curiosity may be one personality trait that can enhance people’s creative problem-solving abilities.
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The Upside of Uncertainty
Scientific American: Who is more persuasive: A person who expresses great certainty about his or her views, or a person who is less sure? If you are like most people, your intuition is that certainty makes you more persuasive. And this makes sense. A person who expresses certainty seems better informed; perhaps more credible. Most of us have had the experience of being persuaded by someone simply because they were so sure about what they were saying. Read the whole story: Scientific American
