Tag: psychology
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #36 — People are Inherently Lazy
Ok, I’ll admit it, I am exaggerating a little bit when I say people are inherently lazy. What I really mean is that people will do the least amount of work possible to get a task done. Is lazy another word for efficient? — Over eons of evolution humans have learned that they will survive…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #34 — Too Much Stress Results In Poor Performance
A few days ago I found myself in a hotel room outside of Chicago with my 19 year old daughter moaning and sometimes howling in pain. She’d been sick for a week, each day with a new symptom, and this morning her eardrum felt like it was going to burst. We decided that I should…
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The Insight Improv Sessions
I sat in a folding chair in a high-ceilinged room in an old building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When I signed up for my first improvisation theater class (many years ago), I didn’t know what to expect. As I waited for the “leader” to arrive I felt more than a little apprehensive. The room was spare,…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #32 — Synchronous activity bonds the group
What do members of a marching band, fans at a college football game, and people at Sunday church have in common? They are all engaging in “synchronous” activity. What is synchronous activity? — It is when you take action with others, where everyone is moving, singing, chanting, in time together. What happens when we engage…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #29 – Brand Names Talk To Our "Old" Brains
You are planning on buying a new TV. Will you buy a brand you recognize? Or will you go for the unfamiliar “no name” brand that is less expensive? What if you are buying luggage? Talking to the “old brain” — In my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I write about the…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #25 — Trust Your Gut or Be Logical? It Depends On Your Mood
In a previous post on how mood affects your reaction to brands you know (see You Are Most Affected By Brands And Logos When You Are Sad And Scared), I talked about the research from Marieke de Vries of Radboud University Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. De Vries also did research on two types of decision…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #24 — You Are Most Affected By Brands and Logos When You Are Sad Or Scared
Here’s Scenario 1: You get together with your friends to watch your home team play a game on TV. They win! After an afternoon of fun and friendship you stop at a grocery store on your way home. You are in a good mood. Are you more or less likely to buy the usual cereal…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #23 — You Are Hard-Wired For Imitation and Empathy
If you put your face right in front of a young baby and stick out your tongue, the baby will stick out his or her tongue too. This happens from a very young age (even as young as a one month old). So? What does this have to do with anything? It’s an example of…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #22 — Peripheral Vison — Keeping You Alive or Channel Surfing?
You have probably heard the term “peripheral vision”, but did you know that you use your peripheral vision to get the gist of the scene around you? Two kinds of vision — Basically, you have two types of vision: Central and Peripheral. Central vision is the vision you have when you look at something directly…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #21 — You Overestimate Your Reactions to Future Events
Here’s is a thought experiment — On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, rate how happy you are right now. Write that number down. Now, I want you to imagine that today you win the lottery. You now have more money than you ever thought…
