Articles of: Maja Kochanowska
“I’m not a risk taker” – the US BASE jumpers’ perception of their own risk tolerance
There was supposed to be an article about skydivers’ perceptions of their propensity to take risks, but it turns out that people in the USA are a bit different than in Poland. Intercultural differences?
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Hindsight bias or “I knew it all along”
“I knew it would rain, I had to take an umbrella”, “I knew from the beginning that Spain would be the European Champion”, “I knew this event would be weak” – how many times do we hear such statements? And why don’t people take these umbrellas if they knew it was going to rain? Why […]
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Music during work – helps or disturbs?
Some people like to listen to music while working, while others prefer to work in silence and say that music makes it difficult to concentrate. How is it actually? As with everything in psychology – it depends ;)
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Heuristics, or thinking by shortcuts
In everyday conclusions, we often use heuristics, i.e. simplified rules of thinking. Thanks to their use, we do not have to analyze all the information that reaches us, but on the other hand, such shortcutting leads to many mistakes.
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“I don’t judge by appearance” – really?
You will probably agree that we should not be guided by their appearance when judging other people. Many of us directly declare that “I do not judge people by appearance.” Still, we often unconsciously judge by appearance.
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How the average person understands statistical data
According to research results, many people have surprisingly little knowledge of statistics. One of such studies (Smedslund, 1963 as cited in: Tyszka, 1999) examined whether nurses were able to assess whether there was a relationship between any symptoms and the disease. They were given to review 100 patient cards for the experiment, each containing information […]
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How do we come to be sure of our beliefs
Imagine having to guess what is governing the sequence of numbers: “2,4,6”. To guess the rule, you can tell other strings of numbers and ask if the strings match the rule. The task is apparently very simple … “10,12,14?” – yes, it complies with this rule. “106,108,110?” – yes, this sequence also complies with this […]
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Can pessimism be beneficial?
In previous articles, I wrote about the positive distortions of our image. The fact that most think they are better than most; that when we succeed, we conclude that it is our merit, and if we fail, we were simply unlucky; that we don’t believe that something bad could happen to us and the like […]
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Planning our activities and confidence in our knowledge, i.e. how we overestimate ourselves
In my article on self-serving bias, I mentioned that we often unfoundedly consider ourselves superior to others, but even when we do not compare ourselves to anyone, we tend to overestimate ourselves.
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The illusion of control
It is nice to feel in control of what is happening, but there are situations that, despite our best efforts, we cannot control. It would be rational in such situations to admit that well – I have no influence on this event, but research shows that we often succumb to the illusion of control.
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