psychology

What Homes is really telling Watson when he contrasts seeing and observing is to never mistake mindlessness for mindfulness, a passive approach with an active involvement.

Neuroscientist Diana Tamir found that your brain gets more pleasure from you talking about yourself than it does from food or money.

From the very start, Watson is predisposed to think well of their guest. After all, he is already in a relaxed, happy mood, bantering in typical fashion with his detective flatmate. And rightly or wrongly, that mood will spill over into his judgment. It’s called the affect heuristic: how we feel is how we think. A happy and relaxed state makes for

The bias has been given several names; following Paul Slovic I will call it denominator neglect.

Another factor influencing whether we like someone or not is whether we find them physically attractive. Attractiveness produces a so-called halo effect , meaning that we tend to see attractive people as smart, kind and honest. Worryingly, we even tend to vote for more attractive candidates in elections!

“Hear a piece of information and three days later you’ll remember 10 percent of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65 percent.”

This exacerbates their problem of downward immobility.

This policy of remembering and honouring the names of his friends and business associates was one of the secrets of Andrew Carnegie’s leadership.

Even similarity of stuff you don’t like helps you bond with others. Research shows that shared complaints make us feel closer to others. Do you both dislike the same person?