Why autistic people may be less susceptible to marketing tricks We know from past research that autistic people process the world differently at a perceptual level, including showing reduced sensitivity to context. One consequence is that they’re better than average … Continue reading Autism implies more consistency
The Rise and Fall of Cognitive Control Reasoning, problem solving, symbolic language, planning—these faculties are fundamental to virtually all of our individual and societal accomplishments. At the heart of them all lies cognitive control. Psychologists and neuroscientists refer to cognitive … Continue reading The downsides of controlled processing
Why is society so anxious about delusional beliefs? Desperately striving for an objective view of reality is a technique to reduce anxiety-provoking uncertainty. It promises itself as a way to stop a descent into madness, to avoid being completely disorientated … Continue reading Is delusion just a false belief?
Behave Yourself: Moral Behavior and Conformity As kids we were often nudged by our parents to be conventional: “look at your behavior- why don’t you behave like everyone else?” is a sentence I’ve been hearing from mum too often as … Continue reading A moral rule of thumb
The potential of behavioural economics: beyond the nudge Behavioural economics is a revolutionary field. Its champions may not have beheaded any royalty, but they have done the academic equivalent by overthrowing a paradigm that ruled our thinking and shaped our … Continue reading A nudge bias
Confirmation Bias: Why You Should Seek Out Disconfirming Evidence Confirmation bias is our tendency to cherry pick information which confirms pre-existing beliefs or ideas. This is also known as myside bias or confirmatory bias. Two people with opposing views on … Continue reading The desire to be right
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
