“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius In The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely talks about a concept called self herding. Herding refers to the tendency to act based on the behavior of other people whom we don’t know […]
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John Ioannidis is a professor at a university in Greece. He leads a group of Ph.D.s and doctoral candidates who specialize in a field of study called meta research, which is the study of the quality of scientific research itself. His papers are among the most highly cited in the world and he is asked
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I was giving a talk at a VA hospital one day and as people began trickling into the room one of them looked vaguely familiar. She walked up to me and said, “Remember me?” As it turned out, we grew up in the same small town in South Dakota. Her sister babysat me when I
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In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Dr. Robert Cialdini brings up a study conducted to measure “unthinking compliance.” In the study, a researcher asks a subject if she can cut in line to make copies and phrases the request in one of three ways. Request 1: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use
Fairy dust? I frequently get requests from friends and clients for advice on supplements that they’re taking. Often, what they’re taking is ridiculously overpriced, under-dosed and at times even counterproductive. There are quite a few reasons behind this, but for this article I’m going to focus on one concept in particular. Dubious manufacturers in the
Why is it that crappy foods are so commonly and aggressively marketed as health foods? If people want to eat quality food, why not just give it to them? The answer lies in economics. There are only a limited number of people in the U.S. market, and they will only eat a certain amount of
Most people would agree that getting in a fender bender in the parking lot is preferable to flipping your car three times on the highway. Not getting in a car wreck in the first place, however, is still your best option. There is a substantial difference between that which is better and that which is
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I am going to tell you the best-kept secret to ultimate health and fitness. With this one piece of special information, you’ll have pain-free joints, ripped abs and the muscles you’ve always been after. You’d better have a pen to write this down because this one inside tip will finally unlock the door to maximum
I recently finished reading Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky. It’s an illuminating and fairly technical book covering the multitude of ways that chronic stress slowly debilitates and eventually kills you and what to do about it. I took a lot of notes throughout the book on things like the impact of exercise on
I received an email recently from a young Special Programs candidate about to enter selection training. He had sought advice on how to make it through the process from a number of others who had been there, but the advice he had gotten was frustratingly simple, “Just don’t quit.” That advice though, is really the