We tend to think of our personalities as pretty fixed and stable. We divide ourselves into introverts and extroverts, dreamers and realis...

Got an important decision to make? If you’re feeling hungry, new research suggests you should probably have a snack or a meal before you ...

Previously, we’ve talked about how enlarged pupils can signify attention or arousal. If someone’s pupils dilate when you talk to them, co...

At over a decade old, Barry Schwartz's 2004 The Paradox of Choice definitely shows its age in some ways. CD players appear in example sho...

StartFragment When it comes to selling, is it better to present your customers with many options, or just a few? It's a debate that's bee...

Imagine that, on the second morning of a business trip, you go to unzip your suitcase, only to realize you forgot to pack any pants. With...

Decision making: it’s what humans do. Estimates are that the average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day. Of those daily decisions, 226 i...

Last time you pulled up to a gas pump, you had to make a choice. That choice consisted of 87% with ethanol, Regular, or Premium. It’s a c...

Decision making: there are countless books about it because, lets face it, decisions are at the epicenter of what we humans do. Make the w...

Allegedly, this year Noah has knocked out Michael as the most popular baby boy name in the US. Perhaps among the names least likely to ma...

Taraxacum is not some newly found dinosaur. It is the scientific name for the pesky weed commonly called the dandelion. The dandelion ind...

“Oh, the thigh bone’s connected to the leg bone and the leg bone’s connected to the…” You probably learned some version of this classic ...

Have you ever wondered why some people—and maybe we’re talking about you—are so adamant about some things? It might be a political positi...

StartFragment “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” So said Mark Twain, printer, steamboat...

Last week’s blog dealt with the inherent threat in complex systems, specifically your Grandmother, (or really, anybody’s Grandma) and cor...

Imagine your grandma just celebrated her 85th birthday. She's beginning to forget things, but her doctor has reassured you that since, if...

Unlike Calvin here, most of us will probably never get the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation between our current selves and...

Are you lying to yourself every day? Depends: are you a "Bayesian Updater?" Hopefully you are. The term is named after Reverend Thomas Ba...

When you contemplate your life, wondering what it means to be alive, it’s unlikely the first thing that came to mind was ‘office work.’ A...

"Are you smarter than a mouse?" This was one of the intriguing topics presented at this week's Society for Neuroscience conference in San...