Behavioral Psychology

I’m no moral philosopher, but from a behavioral standpoint, a lot of what we consider “evil” is poor self-control and/or psychopathy, which both make some of us less likely to suppress acting on impulses coming from the darker side of our human nature.

This is maybe the single most important core of human psychology - people want to reinforce narratives about themselves. If you’re marketing, don’t sell them a thing, sell them a self image that your thing happens to reinforce.

One recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that while men in the workplace may view women’s status gains positively, their power gains are, in contrast, perceived as negative and threatening. So threatening, in fact, that the researcher behind the study, Sonya Mishra, observed that they push men toward more... See more

The essay suggests that in high-energy emotional states, such as falling in love, grief, awe, psychedelics, deep meditation, the brain becomes molten, its patterns loosened, more open to reorganisation. The person we focus on in these states becomes like a mold for the cooling metal, shaping how our thoughts settle, what habits crystallise, what... See more

A charming person is not one that glimmers but holds a mirror to your glow — a conversation with them makes you fall for them by making you fall for yourself.

This is choice paralysis. Previous generations didn’t have many options so they stuck together through hard times and made it work. Now, abundance (or its illusion) has led people to feel less satisfied. People are now more anxious about making a choice and less certain that the one they made was correct.

No one deserves to be praised for kindness if he does not have the strength to be bad

The spacing effect was reported in 1885 by a German psychologist called Hermann Ebbinghaus. He observed that we tend to remember things more effectively, if we spread reviews out over time, instead of studying multiple times in one session.

The authors link this to the so-called Tocqueville paradox, which suggests that social progress can, paradoxically, lead to greater frustration.