Articles (page 14)

A popular attention book says the brain is network switching and that costs persist when a switch is predictable. The laboratory papers behind that idea give specific numbers: a few hundred…

The lizard brain comes from a 1960s model of a brain built in layers. Researchers who study brain evolution reject the layers, and the marketing advice resting on them has to be defended on other…

Letters that made a tax debt more visible got small debts paid and moved large ones not at all. The research that ties shame to better conduct measures something different, a private feeling and the…

Vivid news does shift what people buy, but the evidence is narrower than the heuristic's name suggests. Insurance, travel and meat show local effects that fade, and the one study that tested media…

The saying that one bad review outweighs five good ones rests on a real pattern. Psychologists have documented it widely, and one study of book sales found that one-star reviews moved sales further…

Neuroplasticity is real, and the strongest evidence for it took years of a specific task. Products that cite it as proof of rewiring are making two further claims, and the game trials, a regulator's…

A 2019 replication of the best-known study of deliberate practice found the best violinists had practised less than the good ones. The evidence supports practice as a requirement for skill, and it…

The idea that the least competent people are the most confident has become shorthand for a whole kind of person. The research is less settled than that. The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a pattern…

Expert-written instructions fail in a predictable way: the writer cannot unknow the subject, so the steps that feel obvious are the ones left out. The curse of knowledge is well supported in…