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How to Trick People Into Saving Money
The Atlantic: Late last summer, Dawn Paquin started keeping her money on a prepaid debit card from Walmart instead of in a traditional checking account. The wages from her factory job—she works from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., inspecting blades on industrial bread-slicing machines—now go directly onto the Visa-branded card, which she can use like a regular debit card, though unlike most debit cards, it is not linked to a checking or savings account. She made the switch after a $4 check she wrote to buy coffee for herself and a friend tipped her checking account below the required minimum and triggered $100 in overdraft fees. This was before she got the factory gig, and she wasn’t working full-time.
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People Have Limited Knowledge. What’s the Remedy? Nobody Knows
The New York Times: In “The Knowledge Illusion,” the cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach hammer another nail into the coffin of the rational individual. From the 17th century to the 20th century, Western thought depicted individual human beings as independent rational agents, and consequently made these mythical creatures the basis of modern society. Democracy is founded on the idea that the voter knows best, free market capitalism believes the customer is always right, and modern education tries to teach students to think for themselves. ...
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Why We Shut Ourselves Off From Opposing Viewpoints
Pacific Standard: Interested in an opportunity to earn easy money? All you have to do is spend a couple of minutes reading eight statements that challenge your point of view on a political issue. Who would turn down that offer? According to revealing new research, the answer is: most of us. ... Our desire “to avoid listening to people with opposing ideals” is stronger than we realize, writes a research team led by University of Winnipeg psychologist Jeremy Frimer. It reports this pull is equally strong for liberals and conservatives, is not limited to Americans, and is rooted in deep-seated psychological needs.
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring antecedents and consequences of anger and disgust and coordinated herding behavior among multiple agents.
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Inequality Isn’t the Real Issue
The Wall Street Journal: What do Americans and Europeans see as the greatest threat now facing the world? A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that the most common answer is inequality—ranking above religious and ethnic hatred, pollution, disease and nuclear weapons. Pope Francis has called economic inequality “the root of social evil,” and inequality was a major theme in the last presidential election, with different solutions offered up by candidates of the left and right. ...
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You’re Too Focused on What You’re Focused On
The New York Times: Here’s some good news for self-conscious people. That coffee stain on your shirt, those mismatched earrings you absent-mindedly selected this morning, that unfortunate haircut you just got — people do not notice those things as much as you think. Although it can feel as if your flaws and missteps are the focus of everyone’s attention, research in social psychology suggests otherwise. In a classic study from the 1990s, for example, participants put on a shirt emblazoned with the face of the singer Barry Manilow and then walked into a room full of people.
