Archive for February, 2010

Designing your life, part one

Posted in General | Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 | No Comments »


We have limited willpower.

Such is the fundamental premise of The Power of Full Engagement, synthesizing countless studies observing a whole spectrum of folks, from stay-at-home moms to high-level athletes.

Essentially, every time we use willpower, you deplete your willpower reserves. When that runs dry, we revert to the path of least resistance– usually, our default setting. These default settings have a much greater impact on our daily lives than we realize–whether for small decisions or for big decisions.

One striking example, given by economist Richard Thaler in Nudge, is the effect of presumed consent versus presumed dissent on organ donation. You’d think people would care pretty strongly about this– but we don’t. At least, not enough to express a preference; in the vast majority of cases, we go with the default setting.

So you might want to make sure your default settings work for you. Think of your daily life. What are your current default settings?  Are there behaviors you’d like to change? Don’t rely on willpower– use the power of default settings.  Tweak settings to encourage the behaviors you want; discourage the behaviors you don’t want.

Cognitive Fluency

Posted in General | Monday, February 8th, 2010 | No Comments »


Psychologists have determined that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names.

Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process - even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it - can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous, and more open about their personal shortcomings.

Because it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for - in short, in any situation where we weigh information.

It seems to be an evolutionary adaptation, Mr. Bennett writes — a mental shortcut that signaled familiarity in a treacherous world. In other words, “If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet.”

From the New York Times- Thanks to Barney Pell for pointing this one out