Post No.: 0321 Furrywisepuppy says: Consciousness is just the tiny tip of the iceberg. Most of the time, we’re completely unaware of the unconscious decisions made on our conscious self’s behalf. Examples include picking up the diluted pupils … Read More
Post No.: 0312 Fluffystealthkitten says: Conspiracy theories always involve the rejection of an official account – it’s the presumption of some nefarious intent or a cover-up behind official positions. Conspiracy theories tend to be linked to one’s … Read More
Post No.: 0303 Furrywisepuppy says: ‘Fluency’ or ‘cognitive ease’ is the ease with which something is cognitively processed, and results in heuristics such as ‘simple means true’ or ‘easy means best’. People prefer, and prefer to trust, things … Read More
Post No.: 0294 Furrywisepuppy says: We tend to overestimate our ability to accurately read other people’s emotions from their facial expressions. And because we don’t always receive feedback on whether we’re incorrect in our readings, we usually assume … Read More
Post No.: 0282 Furrywisepuppy says: The ‘hindsight bias’ or ‘I-knew-it-all-along effect’ is the tendency to see past events as being more predictable than they actually were at the time. It’s when something seems obvious… but only after we’re … Read More
Post No.: 0277 Furrywisepuppy says: In such a complex world, it’s remarkable that we rarely ever feel stumped, for we have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes our way! We like/dislike people long before knowing … Read More
Post No.: 0249 Furrywisepuppy says: ‘Basking in reflected glory’ (or BIRGing) is when people associate themselves with the successes of others, such that a successful person’s (or team’s) achievements and high status becomes one’s own sense of achievement … Read More
Post No.: 0243 Furrywisepuppy says: Change is difficult because of our inherent ‘immunity’ to change – we find change threatening, even when we know it’d be for our own overall benefit. It’s as if we have an immune … Read More
Post No.: 0237 Furrywisepuppy says: The ‘bystander effect’ is when people are less likely to react to an emergency or offer help to a victim when people are as part of a crowd – because of a diffusion … Read More
Post No.: 0232 Fluffystealthkitten says: The ‘halo effect’ occurs when Spartans, while playing multiplayer, tend to have an irrepressible urge to repeatedly jump up and down in an attempt to dodge getting headshot; which is a technique one … Read More
Post No.: 0227 Furrywisepuppy says: The perception of reality can legitimately differ from individual to individual, and even from moment to moment. A clear example is our own perception of how fast time seems to pass (that has … Read More
Post No.: 0220 Furrywisepuppy says: We all have limited attentional resources – so we can do several things at once but only if they’re all very undemanding and simple intuitive tasks or tasks we’re specifically skilled at doing. … Read More
Post No.: 0213 Furrywisepuppy says: A ‘placebo’ is something, whether a compound, procedure or other thing, that brings about a beneficial psychological (and therefore possibly physiological) effect for a patient, that cannot be attributed to the therapeutic worth … Read More
Post No.: 0194 Furrywisepuppy says: ‘Priming’ has been mentioned before within several previous posts already, so we’ll explore a bit more about this psychological technique or effect… Priming involves exposing people to a prior stimulus, such as … Read More
Post No.: 0183 Furrywisepuppy says: Just about every person has told lies before, at least small lies, and if you deny that you have then you’re lying right now or you’re extremely good at deceiving even yourself! Sometimes … Read More
Post No.: 0177 Furrywisepuppy says: This post expands on Post No.: 0057 regarding our fast, automatic and effortless ‘system one’ or intuitions, and our slow, deliberate and effortful ‘system two’ or conscious analyses… Systems one and two … Read More
Post No.: 0166 Furrywisepuppy says: If you’ve been reading the posts in this blog consecutively, you’ve probably noticed that cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias have been mentioned several times before in previous posts, so I’d like to offer … Read More
Post No.: 0157 Furrywisepuppy says: The ‘availability heuristic’ is the process of judging the size of a category or frequency of an event by the ease or fluency in which specific instances of it come to mind (e.g. … Read More
Post No.: 0148 Furrywisepuppy says: A personal self-monitoring and self-control of our biases shouldn’t be relied upon (well there’s the bias of believing that one has gotten one’s own biases under control or that biases mainly affect other … Read More
Post No.: 0127 Fluffystealthkitten says: As you probably know very well from personal experience – trying to debunk another person’s deeply-held beliefs is often fraught with dangers. It can sometimes backfire, and backfire spectacularly. It’s like trying to … Read More
