Itamar ShatzNiccolò Machiavelli was an eminent philosopher and diplomat in the Florentine Republic, between the late 1400s and the early 1500s. His renowned writing on strategy and politics led to the creation of the term Machiavellianism, which refers to the use of cunning and duplicity in statecraft and in general conduct, and he is sometimes …
The overkill backfire effect is a cognitive bias that causes people who encounter a complex explanation to reject it in favor of a simpler alternative, and to sometimes also reinforce their belief in the simpler alternative. For example, if someone is presented with a complicated scientific explanation for a certain phenomenon, the overkill backfire effect …
A logical fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that contains a flaw, either in its logical structure or in its premises. An example of a logical fallacy is the false dilemma, which is a logical fallacy that occurs when a limited number of options are incorrectly presented as being mutually exclusive to one another …
When you write or talk, you generally do so with the purpose of conveying information, and the better you are at conveying information, the more likely people are to understand and accept what you have to say. However, despite the importance of being able to communicate effectively, and despite the frequency in which we …
The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a psychological study conducted in the late 1960s to early 1970s, in which children were placed in a room with some tasty snack, such as a marshmallow, and told that if they could wait for a short while before eating it then they will get an extra snack as a …
Whether you’re studying for a college course, practicing a new language, or trying to improve at your favorite sport, there are three factors that determine how successful your learning process will be. These factors are your natural abilities, the amount of effort that you put into learning, and how optimized your learning process is. …
The masked-man fallacy is a logical fallacy that is committed when someone assumes that if two or more names or descriptions refer to the same entity, then they can be freely substituted with one another, in a situation where that’s not the case. For example, the masked-man fallacy could occur if someone claimed that, …
The protégé effect is a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information. For example, a student who is studying for an exam could benefit from the protégé effect and improve their understanding of the material, by teaching that material to their peers. …
The authority bias is a cognitive bias that makes people predisposed to believe, support, and obey those that they perceive as authority figures. Most notably, the authority bias is associated with people’s tendency to obey the orders of someone that they perceive as an authority figure, even when they believe that there’s something wrong …
The Google effect and digital amnesia are two related psychological phenomena, which have to do with our tendency to forget information that is available online or stored digitally. For example, the Google effect and digital amnesia could cause someone to forget a certain piece of information, if they know they can find it later by searching the …