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An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways
Atlas Obscura: When the cockpit recorder transcript from Air France Flight 447 was leaked to the public in 2011, many startling details emerged. The plane, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board, had been under the control of pilots who were communicating poorly and not realizing one another’s mistakes. The plane’s speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, “designed to be impossible to ignore.” It blared the word “Stall!” 75 times. Everyone present ignored it. Within four minutes, the plane had hit the water. Alarm sounds are engineered to elicit particular responses in humans.
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The Varieties of Anger
The New York Times: Bitterness. Hostility. Rage. The varieties of anger are endless. Some are mild, such as grumpiness, and others are powerful, such as wrath. Different angers vary not only in their intensity but also in their purpose. It’s normal to feel exasperated with your screaming infant and scornful of a political opponent, but scorn toward your baby would be bizarre. Anger is a large, diverse population of experiences and behaviors, as psychologists like myself who study emotion repeatedly discover. You can shout in anger, weep in anger, even smile in anger. You can throw a tantrum in anger with your heart pounding, or calmly plot your revenge.
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Financial Impulsivity Increases as the Workday Wears On
After completing several hours of challenging cognitive tasks, people’s financial decision-making style shifted to favor splurging over saving.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Instantaneous Conventions: The Emergence of Flexible Communicative Signals Jennifer Misyak, Takao Noguchi, and Nick Chater Humans are often able to communicate even when they don't share the same language. How is this possible? Participants played a partner-based computer game in which bananas and scorpions were hidden in boxes. The goal of the game was to collect as many bananas as possible, but only one player could see inside the boxes and the other player was the only one who could "choose" the boxes. Players communicated nonverbally using a limited number of white tiles.
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Can Training Help People Un-learn a Lifetime of Racial Bias?
Nautilus: In the 1990s, the block I lived on in New York City was chaotic and seedy. From my window, I’d witnessed many drug deals, one stabbing, and the aftermath of one shooting. The mayhem escalated dramatically on the Fourth of July, when it was a good idea to stay somewhere else for the night. But one sweltering Fourth, my travel plans fell through. I’m gazing out my second-floor window when two young men on the street below start throwing cherry-bomb firecrackers into the open window of the apartment directly across the street. After a few minutes of that, one of them leaps up, grabs the fire escape ladder and climbs up and through the open window into the apartment.
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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
