Psychology

What is going on here? Shafir and Tversky argued that when we make choices, we are not ‘expressing’ a pre-existing preference at all; indeed, they would argue that there are no such preferences. What we are doing instead is improvising – making up our preferences as we go along.

To make the most sense of my own behaviour, I will aim to think and act as I did before.

If we are asked to choose an option, we mostly focus on reasons for choosing one thing or another: and these reasons will tend to be positive reasons in favour of one option or the other. The extreme option has the most powerful positive reasons (e.g. a very close relationship with the child), so it wins out. If, on the other hand, we are asked to

Yet the contents of our hidden depths seem to remain perpetually elusive. Freudian psychoanalysts can speculate about our hidden fears and desires; psychologists and neuroscientists can attempt to draw subtle and highly indirect conclusions from actions, heart-rate, skin conductance, pupil dilation and the rate of blood flow in the brain. But no hi

The psychology of perception and emotion suggests that we should look for the truth about love not by attempting an impossible journey into our innermost selves, but by focusing instead on our patterns of thought and interaction in the here and now. Feeling fond of the other, helping and being helped in return, sharing revelations, surges of adrena

So wondering if you are in love, whether you really believe in God, or whether you find a sentimental pop song charming or mawkish, should be a prompt for you to consider how your thoughts and feelings fit together; how they link with your actions and the actions of other people; how they compare with situations you have experienced in the past, an

The human mind perceives, forms concepts, learns, makes judgements, feels emotions, uses language, remembers, invents, dreams, desires. How can so much complexity be captured in a single image? Clearly, some aspects of mental life must be prioritised at the expense of others. But which ones? And after those choices have been made, does the 'picture