Post No.: 0689 Fluffystealthkitten says: Due to the ‘false consensus effect’, we assume others see the world as we do, hence we assume everyone would come to the same conclusions as we would based on the same presented … Read More
Post No.: 0681 Furrywisepuppy says: We’ve talked heck aplenty about biases in this blog. But there’s another collection of problems that affects human judgements that’s equally as important to recognise… Whereas bias is analogous to having all … Read More
Post No.: 0670 Furrywisepuppy says: We intuitively desire and gravitate towards simple internal models of the world over handling its true complex nature, hence we have a tendency to simplify our understanding of the actual world to the … Read More
Post No.: 0664 Fluffystealthkitten says: As everybody knows, carefully manicuring one’s own public image isn’t always about honestly conveying the truth, the whole truth, and only the truth with one-to-one fidelity but about emphasising and exaggerating what one … Read More
Post No.: 0655 Furrywisepuppy says: The tragedies that have been most recently reported in the press become more conspicuous, salient or ‘available’ in our minds. We consequently tend to overestimate their risk. This can happen with recent aeroplane … Read More
Post No.: 0642 Furrywisepuppy says: Most people care about their ‘self-presentation’ almost above all else – image and perceived reputation matters. Most people, without knowing it, will constantly adapt their words and actions to suit different audiences in … Read More
Post No.: 0630 Furrywisepuppy says: The ‘planning fallacy’ occurs when one estimates unrealistically close to the best-case scenario thus ends up being overoptimistic about a task. It’s an extremely frequent and widespread fallacy committed by individuals, businesses, governments … Read More
Post No.: 0622 Furrywisepuppy says: We’ve been learning throughout this blog that our brains don’t interpret the physical world or reality objectively – there are individualised interpretations of the world and our brains interpret the world according to … Read More
Post No.: 0611 Furrywisepuppy says: Advertising isn’t just about products and brands – adverts convey a whole host of other social and cultural information such as norms, stereotypes, values, gender roles, how to ‘supposedly’ live, what our houses … Read More
Post No.: 0588 Furrywisepuppy says: One of the most basic heuristics of ‘system one’ is to represent things in categories, with conceptions of norms and prototypical exemplars that things that belong to a particular category are perceived to … Read More
Post No.: 0584 Furrywisepuppy says: ‘Signalling theory’ is about conveying signals to other individuals that, ostensibly, display one’s genetic fitness or some other desirable trait. The purpose could be for trying to gain a potential mate’s attention or … Read More
Post No.: 0576 Furrywisepuppy says: If our rule of thumb when uncertain is to just ‘pick the middle option’ then what we pick will logically be affected by what options are presented. So we might pick a wine … Read More
Post No.: 0549 Furrywisepuppy says: During decision conflicts, different cognitive networks are competing with each other – for example, reason versus emotion, satisfying our present versus our future desires, reading the word or the colour of the word … Read More
Post No.: 0537 Fluffystealthkitten says: When you present your arguments and you want to motivate action from others – choosing the right framing for the audience in front of you is crucial. How are your arguments directly relevant … Read More
Post No.: 0526 Furrywisepuppy says: Firstly some definitions – the base rate, prevalence or prior probability (which term gets used depends on the context) is the probability of some thing or event occurring, such as the percentage of … Read More
Post No.: 0519 Furrywisepuppy says: The modern world tends to reward extroverts with more fame than introverts, even though it’s the introverts behinds the scenes who mostly make the modern world happen as they work on their computers … Read More
Post No.: 0510 Furrywisepuppy says: We often focus on a fact or story whilst ignoring the source of that fact (or ‘fact’) or story, even though the source will help tell us the reliability of it. We could … Read More
Post No.: 0506 Furrywisepuppy says: We judge things by comparing things – particularly by comparing things with other things that are currently being brought to mind. We don’t (and in many cases can’t) make true absolute or objective … Read More
Post No.: 0497 Furrywisepuppy says: Primes and whatever we happen to be currently thinking about affect our decisions, while anything we fail to currently consider or recall won’t. This should be obvious e.g. if we’re vegan and we’ve … Read More
Post No.: 0488 Furrywisepuppy says: According to some definitions, an ‘emotion’ is an external expression of an inner state that occurs typically without/before awareness in response to a stimulus; whereas a ‘feeling’ is an experience of being in … Read More
