Making decisions is often hard, and making good decisions quickly is even harder. Accordingly, many people struggle when it comes to making big life-alternating decisions, such as which college to go to or what career path to pursue. Furthermore, some people also struggle with other types of decisions, from somewhat important decisions, such as …
Hubris is a personality trait that involves excessive pride, confidence, and self-importance. Accordingly, hubristic individuals tend to overestimate things such as their abilities, knowledge, importance, and likelihood of success. For example, a hubristic person might believe that they’re never wrong, that they’re guaranteed to succeed in all their ventures, or that they deserve to …
Ennui (pronounced on-wee) is chronic boredom that involves weariness, apathy, dissatisfaction, and lack of fulfillment. Some people experience a general sense of ennui in life, whereas others experience it in a specific domain, like their hobbies or work. For example, someone might experience ennui when it comes to a hobby that they previously loved, …
The verbatim effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to remember the gist of information better than its exact form, so they remember general meaning better than specific details. For example, when people read a long text, they’re more likely to remember its core message than how exactly it was phrased. Accounting for …
Jumping to conclusions is a phenomenon where people reach a conclusion prematurely, on the basis of insufficient information. For example, a person jumping to conclusions might assume that someone they just met is angry at them, simply because that person wasn’t smiling at them while they talked, even though there are many alternative explanations …
The contrast effect is a cognitive bias that distorts our perception of something when we compare it to something else, by enhancing the differences between the things being compared. For example, the contrast effect can make a sweet drink taste bland if you drink it immediately after drinking something sweeter, and can make an …
The economic man (or homo economicus) is a conceptualization of people as ideal decision-making machines, with flawless rationality, unlimited cognitive capacity, perfect access to information, and a narrow range of consistent, self-interested goals. Roughly speaking, this means that the homo economicus can be seen as someone who only cares about maximizing things such as …
The rhyme-as-reason effect is a cognitive bias that makes people more likely to believe statements that contain a rhyme, compared to statements that don’t. For example, people generally perceive the statement “woes unite foes” as more accurate than the statements “woes unite enemies” and “misfortunes unite foes”—even though they all mean roughly the same …
A placebo is something, such as a substance or procedure, that has no inherent ability to directly produce an effect of interest, but which can nevertheless produce this effect indirectly, generally through a psychological response. Most commonly, the term “placebo” is used in the medical context, to refer to an inert substance (e.g., a …
The value-action gap is a phenomenon where people act in a way that’s inconsistent with their values. Accordingly, the value-action gap occurs when people act in a way that contradicts or fails to support their values. For example, many people display a value-action gap when it comes to environmental issues, because even though they …