by david allan van nostrand | Sep 18, 2023 | Human Behavior, Psychology
Edward Thorndike is often considered to be the father of modern Educational Psychology. His Law of Effect posits that when our behavior produces a favorable outcome and the same stimulus is presented again, we are more likely to repeat that behavior because we have...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 11, 2023 | critical thinking, Human Behavior, Using Information
Concepts are general ideas about things. They are mental representations we use to understand the world around us. Concepts represent groups of related ideas that are organized around a main theme. One example is how the concept of gravity includes physics, theory,...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 21, 2023 | Human Behavior, Marketing, Social archaelogy, The world around us
The Guardian tells of a visiting British minister who presented a pocket watch to a Taiwanese official. When asked to comment on the gift, the official said he might sell it to a scrap dealer for some money. The stunned minister sniffed that in the UK a watch is...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 14, 2023 | Human Behavior, Psychology, Unintended Consequences
Smile at babies and toddlers and they will almost always do more of what they’re doing, with even more enthusiasm. Frown deeply at them and they will either become hesitant, stop what they’re doing altogether, or even start crying. The smile is rewarding; the frown is...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 31, 2023 | Human Behavior, The world around us
The sandwich story most of us know involves the time John Montagu, Lord of the Admiralty, was hungry but too busy to stop what he was doing to sit down for a meal. He sent a servant for a piece of meat to gnaw on and asked that it be put between two slices of bread so...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 3, 2023 | Case Study, Human Behavior, The world around us, Using Information
In 2016, I converted the more than 1,000 slides I had built for my classroom lectures at the University of the West Indies into articles that I posted on a new site, LetsTakeACloserLook.com. The subject of most of those early articles was an amalgam of what I call the...
