Neuroscience
People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard.
January 6, 2019
You wouldn’t think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that’s what Richard Thaler has done. The founder of behavioral economics describes his unlikely route to success; his reputation for being lazy; and his efforts to fix the world — one nudge at a time. * * * Years ago, Richard Thaler became enthralled with a new line of research about decision-making by the psychologists...
January 6, 2019
You wouldn’t think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that’s what Richard Thaler has done. The founder of behavioral economics describes his unlikely route to success; his reputation for being lazy; and his efforts to fix the world — one nudge at a time. * * * Years ago, Richard Thaler became enthralled with a new line of research about decision-making by the psychologists...
Exercise: A Sanctuary From Stress
January 5, 2019
But harnessing themselves to exercise frequently was not going to happen unless it was necessary to accelerate their weight loss. In the interim, study after study has pointed to the benefits of exercise for improving sleep (1), maintaining cognitive abilities (2), improving bone strength (3), maintaining cardiovascular health (4), decreasing the likelihood of certain types of cancer (5), regulating glucose control in diabetes (6), improving mood disorders (7), and, of course, losing weight. But...
January 5, 2019
But harnessing themselves to exercise frequently was not going to happen unless it was necessary to accelerate their weight loss. In the interim, study after study has pointed to the benefits of exercise for improving sleep (1), maintaining cognitive abilities (2), improving bone strength (3), maintaining cardiovascular health (4), decreasing the likelihood of certain types of cancer (5), regulating glucose control in diabetes (6), improving mood disorders (7), and, of course, losing weight. But...
Using Neuroscience to Understand Stress and Improve Mediation
December 3, 2018
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. What is the physiologic stress response? The physiologic stress response...
December 3, 2018
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. What is the physiologic stress response? The physiologic stress response...
Total Recall
October 3, 2018
Mediators need to remember stuff – lots of stuff. Sure, it helps to have a flush mentality – as my very first, and now long gone, boss used to tell me. Mr. Dalgety would come back to the office after a hearing, raise his hand beside his head and pull an imaginary chain before moving to his next case. Likewise for the duration of a mediation, especially on mediation day, successful mediators need to hold, and retrieve, large amounts of data. Our ability to take in information, store...
October 3, 2018
Mediators need to remember stuff – lots of stuff. Sure, it helps to have a flush mentality – as my very first, and now long gone, boss used to tell me. Mr. Dalgety would come back to the office after a hearing, raise his hand beside his head and pull an imaginary chain before moving to his next case. Likewise for the duration of a mediation, especially on mediation day, successful mediators need to hold, and retrieve, large amounts of data. Our ability to take in information, store...
How Sound Can Hack Your Memory While You Sleep
July 8, 2018
Can you cram for a test while you sleep? Our intrepid neuroscientists attempt to enhance memory by running experiments on subjects while they sleep. You'll be surprised by the results.
July 8, 2018
Can you cram for a test while you sleep? Our intrepid neuroscientists attempt to enhance memory by running experiments on subjects while they sleep. You'll be surprised by the results.
This Computer is Learning to Read Your Mind
July 7, 2018
Modern technology lets neuroscientists peer into the human brain, but can it also read minds? Armed with the device known as a electroencephalogram, or EEG, and some computing wizardry, our intrepid neuroscientists attempt to peer into a subject's thoughts.
July 7, 2018
Modern technology lets neuroscientists peer into the human brain, but can it also read minds? Armed with the device known as a electroencephalogram, or EEG, and some computing wizardry, our intrepid neuroscientists attempt to peer into a subject's thoughts.
Boost: Improving Mindfulness, Thinking, and Diversity
June 8, 2018
Many important decisions can be difficult; require focused, cognitive attention; produce delayed, noisy feedback; benefit from careful and clear thinking; and quite often trigger anxiety, stress, and other strong, negative emotions. Much empirical, experimental, and field research finds that we often make decisions leading to outcomes we judge as suboptimal. These studies have contributed to the popularity of the idea of nudging people to achieve better outcomes by changing how choices and information...
June 8, 2018
Many important decisions can be difficult; require focused, cognitive attention; produce delayed, noisy feedback; benefit from careful and clear thinking; and quite often trigger anxiety, stress, and other strong, negative emotions. Much empirical, experimental, and field research finds that we often make decisions leading to outcomes we judge as suboptimal. These studies have contributed to the popularity of the idea of nudging people to achieve better outcomes by changing how choices and information...
Malleable Lies: Communication and Cooperation in a High Stakes TV Game Show
June 7, 2018
We investigate the credibility of non-binding pre-play statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or not, and propose a more fine-grained two-by-two typology inspired by the idea that lying aversion leads defectors to prefer statements that are malleable to ex-post interpretation as truths. Our empirical...
June 7, 2018
We investigate the credibility of non-binding pre-play statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or not, and propose a more fine-grained two-by-two typology inspired by the idea that lying aversion leads defectors to prefer statements that are malleable to ex-post interpretation as truths. Our empirical...
Apologies & Remedial Mismatches
April 22, 2018
While the context is admittedly horrific--victims of sexual abuse and the Catholic Church--data from the Netherlands, which in 2011 implemented a victim-friendly procedure for victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, provide truly unique insights into "whether and how nonmonetary needs can be addressed within the context of tort law and compensation funds, as the decisions include information on why victims initiated the procedure and what types of relief (e.g., an apology, recognition of their...
April 22, 2018
While the context is admittedly horrific--victims of sexual abuse and the Catholic Church--data from the Netherlands, which in 2011 implemented a victim-friendly procedure for victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, provide truly unique insights into "whether and how nonmonetary needs can be addressed within the context of tort law and compensation funds, as the decisions include information on why victims initiated the procedure and what types of relief (e.g., an apology, recognition of their...
How To Read Someone’s Emotions With 90% Accuracy
April 1, 2018
How neuroscientists are learning to predict emotions with increasing accuracy. Brain scans can read human emotions with 90% accuracy, a new study finds. Researchers have been able to predict the intensity of negative emotions to evocative images. They found that negative emotions have a ‘neural signature’ which a computer could learn.
April 1, 2018
How neuroscientists are learning to predict emotions with increasing accuracy. Brain scans can read human emotions with 90% accuracy, a new study finds. Researchers have been able to predict the intensity of negative emotions to evocative images. They found that negative emotions have a ‘neural signature’ which a computer could learn.
