Overview: Psychology

Uber gets an $82 billion valuation for a low-margin taxi business it has never made a dime on... WeWork implodes after the slightest scrutiny ... that’s the bullshit economy... fraudulent advertising metrics and fake numbers ... to siphon cash through Facebook and Google’s ... counterfeit goods pass through Amazon... a financial crisis based on bu…

often our expectations for fact-checking reflect... the Scooby-Doo model of political accountability... the villain is unmasked ... off to jail... would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for “you meddling kids.” ... Once the facts come to light, the consequences follow ... idealized notion ... rooted at least partly in the “folk theory” of demo…

Most cookie consent pop-ups ... are likely to be flouting regional privacy laws... another piece of research ... also concluded a majority of ... cookie notices offer no meaningful choice to Europe’s Internet users — even though EU law requires one...if it’s configured to contain pre-ticked boxes that opt users into sharing data by default — requi…

Luhmann... published more than 70 books and over 400 scholarly articles... one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century ... “I’m not thinking everything on my own. Much of it happens in my Zettelkasten”...adopt his method and ... learn better, think better, publish more, and be more creative... A Zettelkasten is ... a box of not…

journalism primarily do one thing: cover events... The internet has sped up the news cycle. Now we put more emphasis on covering the last event... But ... events in this era have ceased to drive politics...impeachment... Mueller investigation ... “Access Hollywood” tapes... barely leave a trace on the polls...Events don’t seem to be driving politi…

for iPhone users, but all optimizations are transferable...Your phone is... trying to suck as much energy out of you as it can. Today... we’ll turn your phone into a mindfulness enhancer... designed based on how I aspire to behave... Great tools share three characteristics...:only trigger you when it actually benefits you to use them.require as li…

Organizations must connect their causes to the personal aspirations of their audiences to transform public attitudes... having a majority is not enough... You need a majority that can’t be eroded or peeled away... in 1996... 27 percent of the US public supported legal recognition of same-sex marriages... 60 percent in 2015 ... the new normal... ac…

For those who have grown up with social media... childhood, an era that was fruitfully mysterious for the rest of us, is surprisingly accessible. ... this is certain to have some kind of profound effect on the development of identity... children and teen-agers have gained a level of control that they didn’t have before... Humans have always tried …

Your subconscious never rests... your goal is to direct your subconscious mind to create the outcomes you seek... unlock connections and solutions... Here’s a simple routine to get started:... Take a few moments before you go to bed to meditate on and write down the things you’re trying to accomplish. Ask yourself loads of questions ... Write tho…

2017 study ... showed that voters in Britain highly satisfied with their lives were 1.6% more likely to support the party in power... a 10% rise in family income was associated with a mere 0.18% increase ... happiness seems more important to the outcome of elections than money... in 15 European elections ... Life satisfaction... twice as important…

You never know what your falling apple will be, but you have to be out of your office to see it.... put on your calendar that you’re going to take unstructured thinking time ... When all else fails, take a shower. Showering ... can help cultivate creativity... release dopamine... relax us, which lets our attention turn inward to find free associa…

to actually grow as an adult, you have to play like a kid

Simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behavior.... Most people don’t just think the world should be run meritocratically, they think it is meritocratic... the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure is demonstrably false... Talent and ... “grit” depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowmen…

approximately half of the psychological pressure that we feel to own or not to own a dog is influenced by our DNA with the other half influenced by environmental factors

Focusmate — a free virtual co-working service that pairs you with a complete stranger for 50 minutes of silent, mutual labor over a webcam... harnesses pillars of psychology proven to boost productivity 200-300 percent... just telling someone I was going to do something made me get it done... because it layers various productivity hacks like soci…

Facebook needs to engage its users in more substantive acts of participation. ... mistakenly assumes that locally respected fact-checking NGOs can supply the trust Facebook itself is lacking. But NGOs lack standing... In a liberal democracy, NGOs can legitimately elevate arguments and offer counterarguments to government positions... we assume arg…

How fake news gets into our minds, and what you can do to resist it... to understand why it gets into our mind... by examining how memory works and how memories become distorted.... Fake news often relies on misattribution ... we retrieve things from memory but can’t remember their source... one of the reasons advertising is so effective... Repe…

The systems in the brain that light up when we access our beliefs are the same systems that help us understand stories... the same brain systems involved when people think about who they are and about the beliefs that are most important to them... the default mode network, a set of interconnected areas of the brain associated with identity and sel…

many activists working to create positive change ... seem to think that if they just get their ideas to “go viral” they will ... dominate the discourse. The great lie of this approach is that no singular discourse exists! Each community is now capable of building consensus with itself, where the like-minded talk to others like themselves while fo…

a recent strand of experimental psychology suggests, our political beliefs may have something to do with ... our propensity to feel physical disgust.... The brains of liberals and conservatives reacted in wildly different ways to repulsive pictures... different brain networks were stimulated... the subjects’ neural responses... could predict with …

many of the initial conclusions ...about the scope of fake news consumption, and its effects on our politics, were exaggerated or incorrect. Relatively few people consumed this form of content directly during the 2016 campaign, and even fewer did so before the 2018 election. Fake news consumption is concentrated among a narrow subset of Americans …

“You’re over-feeling this” needs to be a thing ... Yet, we talk about “Groupthink” when “Groupfeel” is the new wave transforming our public sphere... public discourse increasingly eschews actual logic for a sort of culturally agreed upon standard of emotional logic... my feelings ... don’t matter as much as the facts. But since we have so few fa…

this ability to stand outside of one’s immediate context and take a longer historical view, like other forms of genius, may have physical correlates in the brain... they excel at “recognizing relationships, making associations and connections, and seeing things in an original way... much stronger activations (compared to a control group) in the …

Instead of asking, “What rewards should we give away?” ask “How should we give away a reward?” ... how the reward is framed, and the steps customers must take ... the endowed progress effect: We’re more committed to completing a goal when we have made some progress... LinkedIn, where I can gauge my “profile strength,” is similar. My profile is n…

The most important nine words in behaviour design...“Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.”... upfront deliveries of dopamine bond users to products...Instagram lets you try 12 different filters... transaction is emotional... you get to feel like an artist... “Make people feel successful... Give them superpowers!”... the triggers ar…

intellectual humility, the crucial characteristic that allows for admission of wrongness... crucial for learning... difficult to foster... a virtue worth striving for... entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning ...actively curious about your blind spots... It’s about asking: What am I missing here? our reali…

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand... seen at all levels of a company... if you already know the answer... tend to underestimate the difficulty of the question or the problem... become so immersed in t…

reddit community called Change My View ... a ready-made natural experiment ... feed it into programs ... to understand the back-and-forth between human beings ... discovered two things: what kind of arguments are most likely to change people’s minds, and what kinds of minds are most likely to be changed. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ : po…

naive realism, the tendency to believe that the other side is wrong because they are misinformed, that if they knew what you knew, they would change their minds to match yours... maybe WE are the ones who are wrong. We never go into the debate hoping to be enlightened, only to crush our opponents... When confronted with people who disagree, you te…

the Oxford Circus panic ... was amplified by social media.... Fear can be transmitted digitally as easily as it can physically—and that’s a problem because digital technologies reach everyone.... the English-speaking world is in the middle of a fear pandemic... Cognitive biases leave us ill-equipped ... Amygdala hijacks and warped media business m…