Platonically irrational In his essay ‘On Being Modern-Minded’ (1950), Bertrand Russell describes a particularly seductive illusion about history and intellectual progress. Because every age tends to exaggerate its uniqueness and imagine itself as a culmination of progress, continuities with previous … Continue reading Plato on cognitive biases
The irrational user The human mind is a wonderfully complex thinking machine. We’ve developed written language, built skyscrapers, and discovered quantum physics through our collective ability to plan and reason. But despite our intellect and like all earthly creatures, the … Continue reading Biases in user experience
How Behavioral Economics Can (and Can’t) Boost Health As the bestsellers started piling up, from 2008’s Predictably Irrational and Nudge to 2011’s Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, the buzz around behavioral economics — the science and practice of nudging people toward … Continue reading The challenge of behavioral change
Autistics Don’t Do Heuristics Given the debate around human rationality in decision-making over the last 40+ years, you’d think that psychologists and Behavioural Economists would have been scrambling over each other to dig deeper into a statement like the one … Continue reading The rationality of autism
The Cognitive Bias President Trump Understands Better Than You Americans born in the United States are more murderous than undocumented immigrants. Fighting words, I know. But why? After all, that’s just what the numbers say. Still, be honest: you wouldn’t … Continue reading The salient exemplar
You’ve been framed: Why Narratives Matter How many times have you seen a headline similar to this – “Nigeria loses $34 billion to tomato/fish/toothpick imports?” If you’re Nigerian, you’ve heard an assertion like this at least once. And how does … Continue reading Framing economic policy
A Two-Word Psychological Concept Can Explain The Anger Over Obamacare’s Potential Repeal As you may have noticed, the prospect of Congress repealing the Affordable Care Act, as Republicans have long promised to do, has sparked a pretty furious political backlash. … Continue reading Obamacare and loss aversion
