Author: Susan Weinschenk
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #78 — People Use A Schema To Encode And Remember
If I ask you to describe what a “head” is, you might talk about the brain, hair, eyes, nose, ears, skin, neck, etc. A head is made up of many things, but you’ve gathered all that information together and called it “head”. Similarly I could talk about the concept “eye”. And you would think about…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #77 — Not All Mistakes Are Bad
You buy a new digital camera and you start learning how to use it. Chances are that in the first few days of using it you will make a lot of mistakes –press the wrong buttons, forget where things are in the menus, and so on. We tend to think that mistakes are bad and…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #76 — Anticipation Trumps The Actual Experience
You are planning a trip, 7 months away, with your sister to the Cayman Islands. The two of you talk on the phone at least once a week, discuss the snorkeling you plan to do, and talk about the restaurants that are close to the place you are staying. You look forward to the trip…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #75 — The More Difficult Something Is To Attain, The More People Like It
You’ve heard about fraternities that have difficult initiation rituals to get in. The idea is that if an organization is hard to get into, then the people in it like it even more than if entry was not so difficult. More difficult = more like — The first research on this initiation effect was done…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #74 — Listening To Music Releases Dopamine In The Brain
Have you ever been listening to a piece of music and experienced intense pleasure, even chills? Valorie Salimpoor and team (2010) conducted research that shows that listening to music can release the neurotransmitter dopamine. A wide range of music — The researchers used PET (positron emission tomography) scans, fMRI, and psychophysiological measures such as heart…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #73 — 1st Screening About Trusting A Website Is Based On The "Look And Feel"
There isn’t a lot of actual research on trust and website design. There are a lot of opinions, but not necessarily much real data. Research by Elizabeth Sillence and team (2004) provides some solid data, at least in regard to health websites. Sillence researched how people decide whether and which health websites to trust. Participants in…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #72 — Trust Is The Best Predictor Of Happiness
If you want to know who is happiest, then figure out who feels the most trust.Which country has the happiest people? — Eric Weiner traveled all over the world in search of answers to the questions: Which countries have the happiest people and why? His answers surprised him and they surprised me too. Based on research,…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #71 — People Like Pastoral Scenes
Walk into any hotel, house, office building, museum, art gallery, or any place where there are paintings or photographs hanging on the wall, and chances are that you will see a pastoral landscape. Looking for protection, food, and water — According to Denis Dutton, a philosopher and the author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure,…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #70 — People Are Happier Busy And With A Challenge
Consider this scenario: You just landed at an airport and now you have to walk to the baggage claim to pick up your luggage. It takes you 12 minutes to walk there. When you arrive your luggage is coming onto the carousel. How impatient do you feel? Contrast that with this scenario: You just landed…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #69 — Your Brain Craves Surprises
In Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I talk about the role of the “old” brain in scanning the environment looking for anything that is dangerous. This also means that the unconscious, old brain is looking for anything that is new or novel. Water vs. fruit juice — Research by Gregory Berns (2001) shows…
