Category: Psychology

Studies show that people inhabit two separate worlds – the social and the financial – and depending on which one is activated, their thoughts and behaviour can change dramatically.

I received a rude awakening about the separation between financial and social worlds a few years ago when I moved flat. A friend agreed to help me move all my stuff across town in the back of a van I’d hired. It took much longer than I’d expected – we were still unloading at midnight – and we were both exhausted by the end.

Continue reading “Social Versus Financial Thinking – When Money Makes People Lazy and Selfish”

Research shows that when making spending decisions we try to avoid difficult comparisons – but it’s the easy comparisons that can get us into trouble.

Rationally everyone knows that, roughly speaking, money has an absolute value. $10 is $10 is $10. Yes, the prices of goods vary, but generally speaking we know $10 will buy us a book just as easily as a CD.

Continue reading “Avoid The Relativity Trap – How Thinking Globally Can Save You Money”

In recent years psychologists have uncovered all kinds of fascinating and strange new things about the psychology of money. It is a huge and ever-growing topic with new research coming out all the time, so let’s take a quick look around and spot some of the major themes and headline findings.

Continue reading “Whistlestop Tour of Research on the Psychology of Money”

This week PsyBlog is dedicated to the psychology of money.

Over the next week or so I hope you’ll join me on a journey into the psychology of money. Send me your questions as we explore our sometimes strange, sometimes passionate, always complex relationship with filthy lucre:

• Why some people are so obsessed with it, why others don’t care.
• How we decide what to spend it on.
• Why things cost the amount they do.

And many more questions I haven’t thought of yet! I’ll be looking at psychological studies, theories about money and running some polls to reveal our attitudes.

Continue reading “Psychology of Money: What Do We Want To Know?”

Mind-myth 9: Two widely publicised studies have contributed to the myth that the biological progress of cancer can be effectively battled with the power of the mind. Unfortunately these studies – one at Stanford and one at UCLA – have been heavily criticised and subsequent research has failed to back them up.

Continue reading “The Mind Cannot Beat Cancer”

Mind-myth 6: Here’s a quick question for you about human vision. Compare these four very short descriptions of how we see, and decide which you think is true:

1. Rays of energy coming into our eyes allow us to see.
2. Rays first coming into the eyes then going back out again allow us to see.
3. Rays first going out of the eyes then coming back in allow us to see.
4. Rays simultaneously going out and coming back into the eyes allow us to see.

Continue reading “50% of College Students Think We See Like Superman, Despite Perception Course”

Mind-myth 2: studies show that the blind’s other senses are not more acute, but they can learn some amazing skills to compensate, like echolocation.

It’s an oft-repeated idea that blind people’s other senses compensate for their lack of sight. Like the idea that we only use 10% of our brains, it is probably repeated because its rosy optimism seems harmless. In fact it’s a myth with a kernel of truth.

Continue reading “Blind People’s Other Senses Not More Acute”

Thanks to everyone who voted and left comments on the poll I put up last week asking about the accessibility of PsyBlog. I asked whether you find that PsyBlog is pitched at the right level of complexity for you.

Continue reading “Reader Poll: Accessibility Results”

Although cognitive dissonance is a powerful, well-known predictor of human thought and behaviour, its limits are less well understood.

People often display a striking ability to change both their behaviour and their view of the world to try and make it self-consistent. For example, people will interpret seemingly inconsistent information to support their own view of the world and they will adjust their attitudes to make it consistent with their behaviour. One example is that people often value a club or society more if it is harder to get into, even if it turns out to be rubbish.

Continue reading “When Cognitive Dissonance Doesn’t Matter”

Classic psychology studies show just how little access we have to the workings of our own minds.

Ever wondered where your opinions come from, how you manage to be creative, or how you solve problems? Well, don’t bother. Psychology studies examining these areas and more have found that while we’re good at inventing plausible explanations, these explanations are frequently completely made-up.

In this series of posts, I examine some of the classic findings in psychology that show we have precious little insight into our own thought processes.

Continue reading “What Everyone Should Know About Their Own Minds”