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How the Sunk Cost Fallacy Impacts Your Relationships
In the field of economics, the sunk cost fallacy — also called the sunk cost effect — is notorious. It occurs whenever we double down on poor financial decisions based on past investments that can't be recouped. But the phenomenon isn’t relegated only to the realm of business. You may be surprised to learn that it often rears its ugly head in our relationships as well. Sunk Cost Fallacy Examples Christopher Olivola, an associate professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, offers up a few examples of sunk cost fallacy pertaining specifically to finances. ...
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New Content From Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on small-study findings, evaluating the quality of social/personality journals, comparing analysis blinding with preregistration in the many-analysts religion project, information provision for informed consent procedures, and much more.
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Why People Choose to Cooperate, According to Behavioral Science
People stop their cars simply because a little light turns from green to red. They crowd onto buses, trains and planes with complete strangers, yet fights seldom break out. Large, strong men routinely walk right past smaller, weaker ones without demanding their valuables. People pay their taxes and donate to food banks and other charities. Most of us give little thought to these everyday examples of cooperation. But to biologists, they’re remarkable — most animals don’t behave that way. “Even the least cooperative human groups are more cooperative than our closest cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos,” says Michael Muthukrishna, a behavioral scientist at the London School of Economics.
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Doing Good and Taking Chances: Winning Entrepreneurship Posters Explore Business Mindsets
Chen Ji and James Wages receive the 2023 Psychological Science and Entrepreneurship Poster Award, supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
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I Jumped Out of a Plane to Learn the Benefits of Stress
I’m sitting in the back of the plane when the pilot announces we’ve reached maximum altitude. One of the crew gets up and – somewhat theatrically – slides open the side of the plane. In ones and twos, we shuffle towards the open door. When it comes to my turn, standing on the edge of a two-mile vertical drop, I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been. Thankfully, as a first-time jumper, I’m strapped to an experienced parachutist who will guide us down. I don’t even have to take the next step. But my brain is screaming at me not to go through with it. Behind me, my instructor gently pulls my head back so I can hear his reassuring words over the roaring wind.
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Women in Science Are Doing All Right
The toy maker Mattel recently honored International Women’s Day by making “role model dolls” of women in science, tech, engineering and math jobs, while lamenting that “girls are systemically tracked away from STEM.” It’s a cliché that these fields are rife with sexism, but at least in academia the data disagree, according to a new paper in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
