Watching someone else feel pain is a painful experience. The ability to suffer not only your own pain but also that of others has “long been considered the distilled essence of our humanity” by some writers. Concern for the suffering of others has also been said to be central to moral decision making. Fortunately, this […]
Ten days ago, Tim pulled me aside. “Jeff, there’s the keyboard from Room 2,” he said pointing at the trash. “When I pressed the ‘z’ key, I had to hit it three times for it to respond. I wanted to tell you first because I know it affects some of the experiments.” “Thanks, we’ll deal […]
The clouds are pillows. Time is a thief. Life is a journey. According to Groucho Marx a hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running. And I wish I could write a Psychonomics post as fast as a speeding bullet—but because I can’t, all other commitments today will be delayed by virtue of the […]
Anyone who has ever written a book knows how long and arduous the process can be. Anyone who has authored 2 or 3 books should take justifiable pride in their accomplishments. But I know no one who could conceivably author more than 500 books. It sounds preposterous to even think that this many books might […]
Trouble finding the red pen? Just say “tomato.” High-level conceptual information can direct our attention during visual search. Wouldn’t it be handy if saying “metallic” made your keys pop out when you were looking for them? Or if saying “green” helped you find your beer on St. Patrick’s Day? Language is used to orient our […]
The ball is about 20 cm from the hole. The grass is smooth. There is no wind, it is not raining, and you have done this hundreds of times before. A gentle tap and you sink the ball. Just as you would expect from looking at the picture below. Now replay the scenario in your […]
Do children misbehave during a full moon? Are Asians “pushy”? Are the members of minority group X particularly prone to alcoholism? People often fall prey to developing such associations even though they are entirely illusory—that is, the actual statistics of the environment warrant no such beliefs. In the laboratory, those illusory correlations are readily evoked […]
Why do people cooperate? Why do we band together in extraordinary numbers to solve problems? Why do we commit acts of “heroism” to protect or save others, including sometimes people we don’t even know personally? The level of cooperation that humans routinely exhibit poses an evolutionary puzzle and an enigma to economists. The essence of cooperation is the fact […]
Mozart was a child prodigy. He composed from the age of five, and at 17—an age at which many parents would be reluctant to entrust their son with the keys to the family car—Mozart was appointed a court musician in Salzburg. Was his talent genetically determined or did he have the good fortune to be […]
If it weren’t for the “Men in Black” (M.I.B.), your life might be at constant risk from extraterrestrial activity on earth. The M.I.B. are best known for using “neuralizers” to erase witnesses’ memories of alien sightings. One might therefore wonder whether the M.I.B. considered Dan Simons and Chris Chabris famous gorilla as sufficiently extraterrestrial to neutralize him […]