Why do people donate their time and creative thought process to Wikipedia? Or the open source movement? When you stop and think about it you realize that there are many activities that people engage in, even over a long period of time, that require high expertise, and yet are of no monetary or even career…
Category Archives: psychology
100 Things You Should Know About People: #81 — Intrinsic Rewards Trump Extrinsic Rewards
Let’s say you are an art teacher, and you want to encourage your students to spend more time practicing their drawing. You create a “Good Drawing Certificate” to give to your students. If your goal is to have them draw more, and for them to stick with it, how should you give them the certificate?…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #80 — Behavior Can Be Shaped
If you studied psychology years ago, you may remember BF Skinner and his work during the 20th century on operant conditioning. Skinner studied whether behavior increased or decreased based on how often, and in what manner, you provide a “reinforcement” (reward). What the casinos know — Let’s say you put a rat in a cage…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…