Category Archives: Psychology

Disasters, warnings, human nature

Posted on Sep 2, 2005 by sim

When something terrible happens – be it an earthquake, hurricane, airliner crash, terrorist attack etc – it’d be to some extent comforting to know there were no warning signs, that it couldn’t have been prevented. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Psychology | Leave a comment

You don’t know you

Posted on Jul 13, 2005 by sim

First finished book of the summer was Timothy Wilson’s Strangers to ourselves: discovering the adaptive unconscious. This fascinating book is about us and how we don’t really know us at all. Trying – and to a good degree, succeeding – … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Psychology, Reviews | Leave a comment

Rhetorical questions that shouldn’t be

Posted on Jun 29, 2005 by sim

Ever notice how some people often ask rhetorical questions that shouldn’t really be? In other words, they ask a question and then don’t either wait for an answer or care about the answer even when they should. In the English-speaking … Continue reading →

Posted in Psychology, Random thoughts | Leave a comment

On competent jerks and lovable fools

Posted on Jun 23, 2005 by sim

The latest issue of Harvard Business Review had one interesting, albeit a little light article titled “Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools and the formation of Social Networks” by Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo. It’s about how we choose those who … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology | Leave a comment

Timing payments

Posted on Jun 8, 2005 by sim

I bumped into an interesting old article in Harvard Business Review from 2002; Pricing and the Psychology of Consumption by John Gourville. That lead me to Gourville’s earlier research, including the background study for the article: Behavioral Effects of Temporally … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Psychology | Leave a comment