by david allan van nostrand | Jun 1, 2020 | Human Behavior, Psychology
Are you tired of hackneyed phrases? Threadbare moth-eaten sayings that have been used so tediously for so long that they’ve lost whatever meaning they might have had? Me, too. Recently I heard someone say “it is what it is” for the third time in a single...
by david allan van nostrand | May 25, 2020 | Misinformation traps, Psychology, Using Information
Our eyes tell us the top horizontal line is quite obviously longer than the bottom horizontal line. This famous example of an optical illusion purposely deceives us by tricking our eyes into seeing what isn’t there. Illusion is of course the principle behind...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 8, 2019 | Human Behavior, Psychology
In one famous study, judges approved parole in about one third of the cases they heard. But as with most averages, the proportion did not hold steady hour after hour throughout the day. As a matter of fact, prisoners who appeared before judges early in the day were...
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 18, 2019 | Human Behavior, Psychology
The statistics vary from study to study, but most agree that more than two out of three of us have stolen something from work. For most of us, it is small things. Pens, pencils, and paper clips are pilfered all year long. There are seasonal patterns, too. In August,...
by david allan van nostrand | Feb 25, 2019 | Human Behavior, Psychology
Say the words cracker barrel and most Americans think of the chain restaurant and gift shop. Cracker Barrel Restaurants and Country Stores were designed to evoke the friendly, homespun character of general stores from the 1800s, when the U.S. was a rural agrarian...
by david allan van nostrand | Feb 11, 2019 | Human Behavior, Leadership, Psychology
Although it is unlikely Amarillo Slim ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, he was more than familiar with the concept. A Hall of Fame poker player, he liked to point out that “If you don’t know who the fool at the table is, it’s you.” Psychology’s...
