Life is all about uncertainties. Are you risky or are you cautious? David Spiegelhalter‘s proper title is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He shows us how to use statistics to face up to life’s major risks.
One of the biggest risks is to be too cautious, as David says. Being too cautious could be the greatest killer. It kills the fun part in life. So live with a heart and enjoy! Let others do the maths…
Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process – even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it – can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous, and more open about their personal shortcomings.
No, this is neither an excerpt from “Politics for Dummies”, nor the cliff notes to prepare for a stockbrokers exam. It’s from a recent article (which is worth reading in full) on “cognitive fluency”.
Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard.
All very useful to know, but one thing bothers me: if this is how it works, why did the very people who research this stuff come up with the not so fluent term of “cognitive fluency”? Guys, you should know better.
I watched this little TED presentation by a guy named Richard St. John on the common traits in successful people. And I liked it for its concise form, to-the-point. Under four minutes, a mini-lecture with substance. And while watching I really thought: finally someone who cuts straight to the chase, who doesn’t need to write a 224 page book to say the obvious. And why is it that people keep on writing bookshelves full on the subject of success and achievement; all regurgitating what’s been said before, but just with a snappy new tag line? Well, Richard gives it to them, presenting the cliff notes to a successful life in a little chat, in just enough time for a small coffee break…
Yeah…you probably saw it coming for miles (and thanks for the heads up…) – of course there’s a book. How could there not be a book…Ohh.
Anyway, the clip is still worth watching, and leaves you with heaps of time to do other stuff (like drinking coffee).
Love – Peace – Happiness. Flipping through an alumni magazine from Maastricht University I read this article on the subject of priming.
Priming in psychology occurs when an earlier stimulus influences response to a later stimulus. For example, when a person reads a list of words including the word table, and is later asked to complete a word starting with tab, the probability that subject answers table is higher than for non-primed people.
Research done by Kathleen Vohs et al. shows the behavioral effect of priming (through little word puzzles) people with “money”. Those who are have a more self-centered, less social attitude, than those who are not “money”-primed. (Don’t worry, this is not gonna be an exercise in bank bashing…we do that here).
Well, if it works in one way, it might as well work in the other way. Enter PhD candidate Tom van Laer, who’s been doing experiments getting participants in a more social, empathetic frame of mind. Subjects are primed with words like love, peace, friend and attention – positively impacting their social behavior in a task they have to perform next.
Fascinating how easy this works and a reminder that it matters what you surround yourselves with, whether in word, sound, image or scent. Time to bring out the sticky notes: “smile” on the mirror, “healthy” on the fridge, “peace” on the television, “love” on the Mrs (and the neighbor’s cat). Let it shine, it’s prime time.
The marshmallow test is one of impulse control. Children are given a marshmallow and promised a second one in a few minutes, only if they won’t eat the first one.
It’s all about delayed gratification. But, hey, what would you do when such a delicious marshmallow is staring at you?
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