Uncertainty
Incentives, Performance and Choking in Darts
June 14, 2019
This paper examines the effect of incentives on the performance of darts players. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 28,761 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. The game of darts offers an attractive natural research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We find that amateur and youth players perform better under moderately higher incentives, but choke when...
June 14, 2019
This paper examines the effect of incentives on the performance of darts players. We analyze four data sets covering a total of 28,761 darts matches of professional, amateur, and youth players. The game of darts offers an attractive natural research setting, because performance can be observed at the individual level and without obscuring effects of risk considerations and behavior of others. We find that amateur and youth players perform better under moderately higher incentives, but choke when...
Using Neuroscience to Understand Stress and Improve Mediation
March 5, 2019
People involved in conflict generally, and in mediation specifically, encounter many events that initiate the physiologic stress response. What is this response and what triggers it? How does the stress response impact judgment, decision-making, and memory? What can mediators do to minimize the deleterious effects of the stress response? Learning the answers to these questions can help to make a more effective mediator. Mediation creates many stress triggers. Participants may feel unprepared...
March 5, 2019
People involved in conflict generally, and in mediation specifically, encounter many events that initiate the physiologic stress response. What is this response and what triggers it? How does the stress response impact judgment, decision-making, and memory? What can mediators do to minimize the deleterious effects of the stress response? Learning the answers to these questions can help to make a more effective mediator. Mediation creates many stress triggers. Participants may feel unprepared...
The Black Hole Problem in Commercial Boilerplate
February 10, 2017
Rote use of a standard form contract term can erode its meaning, a phenomenon made worse when the process of encrustation introduces various formulations of the term. The foregoing process, when it occurs, weakens the communicative properties of boilerplate terms, leading some terms to lose much, if not all, meaning. In theory, if a clause is completely emptied of meaning through this process it can create a contractual “black hole.” The more frequent and thus potentially more pervasive problem...
February 10, 2017
Rote use of a standard form contract term can erode its meaning, a phenomenon made worse when the process of encrustation introduces various formulations of the term. The foregoing process, when it occurs, weakens the communicative properties of boilerplate terms, leading some terms to lose much, if not all, meaning. In theory, if a clause is completely emptied of meaning through this process it can create a contractual “black hole.” The more frequent and thus potentially more pervasive problem...
Uncertainty Is More Stressful Than Pain, Say Neurologists
May 12, 2016
A recent study found that a small possibility of receiving a painful electric shock causes people more stress than knowing for sure that a shock was on the way. Researchers asked participants to guess whether a snake hid beneath a rock, while measuring stress levels. If a participant guessed incorrectly and turned over a rock with a snake beneath it, he received a small electric shock on the hand. While current research focuses on the negative impacts of stress, there may be benefits, too. The researchers...
May 12, 2016
A recent study found that a small possibility of receiving a painful electric shock causes people more stress than knowing for sure that a shock was on the way. Researchers asked participants to guess whether a snake hid beneath a rock, while measuring stress levels. If a participant guessed incorrectly and turned over a rock with a snake beneath it, he received a small electric shock on the hand. While current research focuses on the negative impacts of stress, there may be benefits, too. The researchers...
