The Psychology of Risk and Reward
An excerpt from The Aspirational Investor: Taming the Markets to Achieve Your Life’s Goals that I think you’d enjoy. Most of us have a healthy understanding of risk in the short term. When …
Social Proof
The Art of Thinking Clearly
Rolf Dobelli’s book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, is a compendium of systematic errors in decision making. While the list of fallacies is not complete, it’s a great launching pad into the …
Pluralistic Ignorance: You’re Not Alone
Imagine you’re in a meeting with a lot of important people. The boss comes in, takes a seat, and starts talking “strategic market knowledge” this and “leveraging competitive …
The Destructive Influence of Imaginary Peers
Tina Rosenberg with a thoughtful op-ed in the NYT on the influence people around us have on our decisions, even, oddly, when they are imaginary. Bad behavior is usually more visible than good. It’s …
Temperament Matters: In Life and Business
I love this excerpt from Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking on Warren Buffett and temperament. Buffett is known for thinking carefully when those around him are …
The sentiments of crowds
A lot of wisdom in this excerpt from Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics: … if there is one thing we know about the sentiments of crowds, it is …
“It was not what people did not know that proved their undoing; it was what they thought they knew that wasn’t so.”
Were witches losers in a reproductive game? Speaking about the great which hunts, in Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics, Will Bonner writes: But …
Secrets from the Science of Persuasion
A great animation describing the fundamental principles of persuasion based on the research of Dr. Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. Dr. …
Why We Overpay at Auctions
Tom Stafford discusses a lot of the psychological principles that make rational bidding hard. Auctions also hit on many psychological persuasion techniques: First, auctions use the principle of …
The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion
In The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Christopher Maurer translates this gem from Baltasar Gracián y Morales: Know how to sell your wares, intrinsic quality isn’t enough. Not everyone bites at substance …
Daniel Kahneman Answers
In one of the most in-depth and wide-ranging Q&A sessions held by the Freakonomics blog, Daniel Kahneman answered 22 new questions about his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Three of the questions …
An Incredible Offer — But Wait…There’s More
You’ll never look at infomercials the same after reading this post. Robert Cialdini calls But Wait…There’s More “A wholly fascinating account of a wholly fascinating …
The Insidious Evils of ‘Like’ Culture
Most people thought the Internet represented a liberation from conformity where ideas, freedom of information, creativity ruled. But what role does our need to belong play? What role does the simple …
The Ten Most Popular Posts of 2010
How Apple Plays the Pricing Game How To Tell When a CEO is Lying? Jamie Dimon’s Summer Reading List Sin Tax Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be More Persuasive What is The …
The Colonel Blotto Game: How Underdogs Can Win
If you’ve ever wondered why underdogs win or how to improve your odds of winning when you’re the underdog, this article on The Colonel Blotto Game is for you. *** There is a rich tradition …
Social Proof: Why We Look to Others For What We Should Think and Do
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” — Walter Lippmann “The five most dangerous words in business are: ‘Everybody else is doing it.'” — Warren Buffett *** …