Articles about: irrationality
We don’t know why we like something – about conscious and implicit attitudes
Our conscious opinions often differ from our implicit opinions. We don’t know what we like and why we like or dislike something. It seems to us that we judge one feature of the object, while in fact something else matters to us.
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How we judge other people – the contrast effect and other mechanisms
How we judge other people changes under the influence of many factors. An example is the contrast effect, i.e. the dependence of the evaluation of one element on comparison to other elements. For example, men who have seen photos of models evaluate the beauty of their wives worse than men who have not seen photos […]
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The power of other people’s influence – conformism and authority figures
Many people do not realize how much other people can influence our behavior. Under the influence of the group, we often behave completely irrational, as evidenced, among others, by the study by Asch (1951 as cited in: Tyszka, 1999).
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Winning the money lottery and happiness
Do you play Lotto because you hope to win and become happier? Then not only do you spend a lot of money on a game where you can win with a probability of 1 to 14 million, but even if you do win, you probably won’t get happier anyway.
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“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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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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