During the summer, smart restaurant owners put cunning tactics on the menu to boost profits
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jul/28/tricks-restaurant-menu-boost-profits
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2014
Monday, November 11, 2013
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Where in the world are people most depressed?
http://www.theguardian.com/society/datablog/2013/nov/08/where-world-people-most-depressed
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
Thursday, October 31, 2013
What Does a Tablet Do to the Child’s Mind? - NYTimes.com
What Does a Tablet Do to the Child’s Mind? - NYTimes.com
- A report published last week by the Millennium Cohort Study, a long-term study group in Britain that has been following 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, found that those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not. The study, of a sample of 11,000 children, found that children who played video games ? often age-appropriate games ? for the same amount of time did not show any signs of negative behavioral changes by the same age.
- But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.
- Conversations with each other are the way children learn to have conversations with themselves, and learn how to be alone,? said Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of the book ?Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.? ?Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don?t want your kids to miss out on that because you?re pacifying them with a device. If you don?t teach your children to be alone, they?ll only know how to be lonely.?
Monday, October 14, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Women poker players, and finance
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/25/women-poker-players-financial-crisis
Victoria Coren:
The millions of new young players, many with maths degrees, brought a revolution in technical strategy. Belligerent old Texans, still relying on primitive ideas of aggression and bluster, have been left in the dust. You do not succeed by being more "competitive" than your opponent, but by being cleverer.
In other words, Mr Wheeler's poker point proves that he overestimates the value of muscle. We have all realised this in poker, but the business world is glacially slow to catch on.
It is the masculine prejudices of the stock market, towards big-hat aggression and high-pressure manoeuvres, that led to the financial mess where we currently find ourselves. Macho competition on trading floors led to over-reaching, borrowed money, crashes – and subsequent demands for huge bonuses from the men who triggered them, on the grounds that this bull-headed approach is a rare and special skill.
If Stuart Wheeler approached me for poker advice, I would tell him what I tell all aspiring players: the first rule is not to go skint. The second rule is to make a profit, however small. Those who are blinded by ego, interested only in vast wins and huge adrenaline rushes, end up trapped in the escalating debt scenario that currently threatens the entire western economy.
Victoria Coren:
The millions of new young players, many with maths degrees, brought a revolution in technical strategy. Belligerent old Texans, still relying on primitive ideas of aggression and bluster, have been left in the dust. You do not succeed by being more "competitive" than your opponent, but by being cleverer.
In other words, Mr Wheeler's poker point proves that he overestimates the value of muscle. We have all realised this in poker, but the business world is glacially slow to catch on.
It is the masculine prejudices of the stock market, towards big-hat aggression and high-pressure manoeuvres, that led to the financial mess where we currently find ourselves. Macho competition on trading floors led to over-reaching, borrowed money, crashes – and subsequent demands for huge bonuses from the men who triggered them, on the grounds that this bull-headed approach is a rare and special skill.
If Stuart Wheeler approached me for poker advice, I would tell him what I tell all aspiring players: the first rule is not to go skint. The second rule is to make a profit, however small. Those who are blinded by ego, interested only in vast wins and huge adrenaline rushes, end up trapped in the escalating debt scenario that currently threatens the entire western economy.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Top Free To Play Monetization Tricks
Gamasutra: Ramin Shokrizade's Blog - The Top F2P Monetization Tricks
From Behavioral economics of Free to Play games (Cory Doctorow)
(http://boingboing.net/2013/07/09/behavioral-economics-of-free-t.html)
- Ramin Shokrizade's "Top F2P Monetization Tricks" shows how the free-to-play world deploys practical behavioral economics to convince players to spend more than they intend to, adapting to players to hook them and then pry open their wallets wider and wider. I was very interested to learn that some games look for behaviors that mark out "spenders" and convert themselves from "skill games" (win by being good at them) to "money games" (win only by spending):
From Ramin Shokrizade's Paper
-Premium Currencies : Research has shown that putting even one intermediate currency between the consumer and real money, such as a ?game gem? (premium currency), makes the consumer much less adept at assessing the value of the transaction. Additional intermediary objects, what I call ?layering?, makes it even harder for the brain to accurately assess the situation, especially if there is some additional stress applied.
-Reward Removal : The technique involves giving the player some really huge reward, that makes them really happy, and then threatening to take it away if they do not spend. Research has shown that humans like getting rewards, but they hate losing what they already have much more than they value the same item as a reward. To be effective with this technique, you have to tell the player they have earned something, and then later tell them that they did not. The longer you allow the player to have the reward before you take it away, the more powerful is the effect.
-Social Layer : In money games that contain a social layer, this social layer is used as an added incentive to show off your ?skills? to other players that may still not realize they are in a money game. This is the purpose of the mini-leaderboards in Candy Crush Saga, to make it look like you need to try harder to beat your more ?skillful? friends.
From Behavioral economics of Free to Play games (Cory Doctorow)
(http://boingboing.net/2013/07/09/behavioral-economics-of-free-t.html)
- Ramin Shokrizade's "Top F2P Monetization Tricks" shows how the free-to-play world deploys practical behavioral economics to convince players to spend more than they intend to, adapting to players to hook them and then pry open their wallets wider and wider. I was very interested to learn that some games look for behaviors that mark out "spenders" and convert themselves from "skill games" (win by being good at them) to "money games" (win only by spending):
From Ramin Shokrizade's Paper
-Premium Currencies : Research has shown that putting even one intermediate currency between the consumer and real money, such as a ?game gem? (premium currency), makes the consumer much less adept at assessing the value of the transaction. Additional intermediary objects, what I call ?layering?, makes it even harder for the brain to accurately assess the situation, especially if there is some additional stress applied.
-Reward Removal : The technique involves giving the player some really huge reward, that makes them really happy, and then threatening to take it away if they do not spend. Research has shown that humans like getting rewards, but they hate losing what they already have much more than they value the same item as a reward. To be effective with this technique, you have to tell the player they have earned something, and then later tell them that they did not. The longer you allow the player to have the reward before you take it away, the more powerful is the effect.
-Social Layer : In money games that contain a social layer, this social layer is used as an added incentive to show off your ?skills? to other players that may still not realize they are in a money game. This is the purpose of the mini-leaderboards in Candy Crush Saga, to make it look like you need to try harder to beat your more ?skillful? friends.
Monday, June 24, 2013
How we really rate our looks | Life and style | The Guardian
Hot or not? How we really rate our looks | Life and style | The Guardian
- We have a deep-seated need to feel good about ourselves and we naturally employ a number of self-enhancing (to use the psychological terminology) strategies to achieve this.
- Nicholas Epley study : Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a lineup including versions that had been morphed to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is "an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation". If the subjects quickly chose a falsely flattering image ? which most did ? they genuinely believed it was really how they looked.
- "I don't think the findings that we have are any evidence of personal delusion," says Epley. "It's a reflection simply of people generally thinking well of themselves." If you are depressed, you won't be self-enhancing.
- another study found that admiring one's own Facebook profile has palpable self-affirming effects, and that people naturally gravitate to Facebook for a boost when their ego has been knocked.
- This is why people spend more time on Facebook after a hard day or something bad happening ? because it reassures you that you're connected, that you have interesting activities and hobbies, photographs, etc." However, despite this positive emotional benefit, research has also shown that we can easily overlook the extent to which others embellish their profiles, and feel sad because our real lives aren't as good as others' appear.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
What is the optimum temperature for productivity?
Facebook staff feel the chill in cold offices
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to keep the office at just 15C, reveals CEO Sheryl Sandberg in her new book Lean In. So is this really the best temperature for productivity?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/shortcuts/2013/mar/11/facebook-staff-chill-cold-offices
n 2006, a study by the Helsinki University of Technology found performance peaked in an office heated to around 22C, while a month-long 2004 study by Cornell University in New York put the ideal level even higher, at 25C. The Cornell study found that when an office was heated to that temperature, workers typed 100% of the time and had a 10% error rate; at 20C, they typed 54% of the time, and had a 25% error rate.
Higher than 25C, the benefits apparently drop off, with the Helsinki study showing that when temperatures reach more than 31C we become even less productive than in a 15C chill. The fact is, unusual heat or cold is distracting, forcing us to expend energy on regulating body temperature. It can also make us fractious – a 2009 survey of US workers found 10% had fought with a colleague about office temperature. All in all, it seems, Zuckerberg should fire up those radiators tout de suite.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Winter Wakes Up Your Mind--and Warm Weather Makes it Harder to Think Straight: Scientific American
Winter Wakes Up Your Mind--and Warm Weather Makes it Harder to Think Straight: Scientific American
Warm temperatures, then, are more likely to deplete our resources?as our bodies work to maintain homeostasis, we use up large amounts of glucose. Because glucose is also used for mental processes, it may be that the physical demands imposed by excessive warmth reduce our capacity for cognitive functioning, thereby adversely affecting our decision-making abilities.
The researchers decided to test this apparent link between weather and complex decision-making in the lab by performing a series of experiments comparing participants? cognitive performance at two seemingly unremarkable temperatures: 19.4°C and 25° C People tend to be most comfortable at around 22.2° C so each temperature represented just ~3° C deviation from maximum comfort.
Despite this minimal deviation in temperature, the researchers found remarkable differences in cognitive functioning. In one lab study, participants were asked to proofread an article while they were in either a warm (25°) or a cool (19.4°) room. Participants in warm rooms performed significantly worse than those in cool rooms, failing to identify almost half of the spelling and grammatical errors (those in cool rooms, on the hand, only missed a quarter of the mistakes). These results suggest that even simple cognitive tasks can be adversely affected by excessive ambient warmth.
In a second study, the researchers showed similar effects for more complex cognitive calculations. In this study, another group of participants were asked to choose between two cell phone plans, again in either a warm or a cool room. One plan looked more attractive on the surface, but was actually more expensive; simple patterns of decision-making would therefore lead participants to choose the more expensive plan, whereas more complex analyses would lead participants to correctly choose the more cost-effective plan. Participants in the cool room made the correct choice over half the time; those in the warm room, on the other hand, made the correct choice only a quarter of the time. Warmer temperatures seemed to make participants more likely to rely on simplistic patterns of decision-making, which in turn led to inferior choices. These results suggest that complex decision-making, like simple cognitive tasks, is adversely affected by warm temperatures.
A third study suggests that warm surroundings may not just cause people to fail at complex decision-making?it may cause them to shy away from making these sorts of decisions in the first place. In this study, participants were placed in either a warm or a cool room and asked to choose between two products: an innovative one and a traditional one. Participants in warm rooms, relative to those in cool rooms, were much more likely to choose the traditional product?ostensibly because they did not have the cognitive resources necessary to evaluate the new information relevant to an innovative item.
These results do not mean, however, that people in warmer climates are reliably prone to making poorer decisions than those in cooler environments. Human beings are remarkably adaptive; we automatically acclimate to changes in ambient temperature and?given a bit of time?are capable of performing just as well in sweltering heat, frigid cold, and a climate-controlled office. It really does matter that you were on vacation when making your lottery decision; if you had been a native Alaskan or Floridian, the temperature would have made little, if any, difference. This research suggests that what does make a difference is slight deviations in temperature from an expected norm.
Warm temperatures, then, are more likely to deplete our resources?as our bodies work to maintain homeostasis, we use up large amounts of glucose. Because glucose is also used for mental processes, it may be that the physical demands imposed by excessive warmth reduce our capacity for cognitive functioning, thereby adversely affecting our decision-making abilities.
The researchers decided to test this apparent link between weather and complex decision-making in the lab by performing a series of experiments comparing participants? cognitive performance at two seemingly unremarkable temperatures: 19.4°C and 25° C People tend to be most comfortable at around 22.2° C so each temperature represented just ~3° C deviation from maximum comfort.
Despite this minimal deviation in temperature, the researchers found remarkable differences in cognitive functioning. In one lab study, participants were asked to proofread an article while they were in either a warm (25°) or a cool (19.4°) room. Participants in warm rooms performed significantly worse than those in cool rooms, failing to identify almost half of the spelling and grammatical errors (those in cool rooms, on the hand, only missed a quarter of the mistakes). These results suggest that even simple cognitive tasks can be adversely affected by excessive ambient warmth.
In a second study, the researchers showed similar effects for more complex cognitive calculations. In this study, another group of participants were asked to choose between two cell phone plans, again in either a warm or a cool room. One plan looked more attractive on the surface, but was actually more expensive; simple patterns of decision-making would therefore lead participants to choose the more expensive plan, whereas more complex analyses would lead participants to correctly choose the more cost-effective plan. Participants in the cool room made the correct choice over half the time; those in the warm room, on the other hand, made the correct choice only a quarter of the time. Warmer temperatures seemed to make participants more likely to rely on simplistic patterns of decision-making, which in turn led to inferior choices. These results suggest that complex decision-making, like simple cognitive tasks, is adversely affected by warm temperatures.
A third study suggests that warm surroundings may not just cause people to fail at complex decision-making?it may cause them to shy away from making these sorts of decisions in the first place. In this study, participants were placed in either a warm or a cool room and asked to choose between two products: an innovative one and a traditional one. Participants in warm rooms, relative to those in cool rooms, were much more likely to choose the traditional product?ostensibly because they did not have the cognitive resources necessary to evaluate the new information relevant to an innovative item.
These results do not mean, however, that people in warmer climates are reliably prone to making poorer decisions than those in cooler environments. Human beings are remarkably adaptive; we automatically acclimate to changes in ambient temperature and?given a bit of time?are capable of performing just as well in sweltering heat, frigid cold, and a climate-controlled office. It really does matter that you were on vacation when making your lottery decision; if you had been a native Alaskan or Floridian, the temperature would have made little, if any, difference. This research suggests that what does make a difference is slight deviations in temperature from an expected norm.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Friends - NYTimes.com
In the era of facebook 'friends' - some interesting points about real friendship as people get older.
Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30? - NYTimes.com
Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30? - NYTimes.com
- As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added.
- External factors are not the only hurdle. After 30, people often experience internal shifts in how they approach friendship. Self-discovery gives way to self-knowledge, so you become pickier about whom you surround yourself with, said Marla Paul, the author of the 2004 book ?The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You?re Not a Kid Anymore.? ?The bar is higher than when we were younger and were willing to meet almost anyone for a margarita,? she said.
Escalation of commitment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Escalation of commitment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Escalation of commitment was first described by Barry M. Staw in his 1976 paper, "Knee deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action".[1] More recently the term "sunk cost fallacy" has been used to describe the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the cost, starting today, of continuing the decision outweighs the expected benefit. Such investment may include money, time, or ? in the case of military strategy ? human lives. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying it are reflected in such proverbial images as "Throwing good money after bad" and "In for a dime, in for a dollar" (or "In for a penny, in for a pound").
Escalation of commitment was first described by Barry M. Staw in his 1976 paper, "Knee deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action".[1] More recently the term "sunk cost fallacy" has been used to describe the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the cost, starting today, of continuing the decision outweighs the expected benefit. Such investment may include money, time, or ? in the case of military strategy ? human lives. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying it are reflected in such proverbial images as "Throwing good money after bad" and "In for a dime, in for a dollar" (or "In for a penny, in for a pound").
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say | Why the Best Candidate Never Wins | Psychology | LifesLittleMysteries.com
People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say | Why the Best Candidate Never Wins | Psychology | LifesLittleMysteries.com
While this headline sounds elitist and paternalistic, the main point is simply again that democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the others. And while democracy may not produce the best leadership, it should protect against the worst (for me the key feature of democracy is the feedback mechanism, by which bad leadership is ultimately removed by the system itself, at the next election). Ideally anyway :-)
Some extracts from this article :
While this headline sounds elitist and paternalistic, the main point is simply again that democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the others. And while democracy may not produce the best leadership, it should protect against the worst (for me the key feature of democracy is the feedback mechanism, by which bad leadership is ultimately removed by the system itself, at the next election). Ideally anyway :-)
Some extracts from this article :
- The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.
- Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve ? some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre ? and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.
- Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."
Why Explaining to Others Helps Us Understand | Teaching | LifesLittleMysteries.com
Why Explaining to Others Helps Us Understand | Teaching | LifesLittleMysteries.com
- Verbally explaining a concept really does help you to better grasp it, according to work by psychologists at the University of California at Berkeley. That's because we all have an intuitive sense of what makes a thorough explanation, but we often neglect to generate one for ourselves. The query of an outsider forces us to replace our false feeling of understanding with actual reasoning.
- Given a collection of robot figurines of various shapes and sizes, students in the study who were asked to explain the group of robots were much more likely to discover the (rather subtle) common thread between the figurines than students who were asked merely to describe the group of robots.
- In the classroom, or in the course of our day-to-day lives, we often overlook deeper explanations in favor of mere observations, or even mistake the latter for the former. Being asked "why" forces us to reassess our knowledge.
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