Articles (page 41)

Most people find a few quiet minutes alone with their thoughts harder than they expect. The famous shock result says less than the headlines claimed.

Limited runs, selling-fast labels, countdowns and last-room warnings are four different tools aimed at different motives. Knowing which one is aimed at you is the defence.

In a trial of people who had quit statins, 90 per cent of the extra symptoms they felt on the drug also appeared on a dummy tablet. What the nocebo effect means.

Brand loyalty feels like a relationship, but decades of buying data show it mostly follows brand size: big brands have far more buyers, each only slightly more loyal.

Timandra Harkness says personalising technology fills a gap in who we are. Christine Rosen says mediated life costs us real experience. Both can be right.

The heaviest fifth of buyers supply far less than 80 per cent of sales, and many of them are not heavy buyers a year later. Plan for the drift.

Write a sure discount in cash and a spin-the-wheel offer can lose its advantage, because uncertain discounts win mainly when the certain alternative looks small.

Public charity comes with an audience. A widely read book and the experiments it relies on suggest the audience changes what people do, though less certainly than either would like.

A famous experiment said that getting people's bodies going makes them share. It failed in 2024. The newspaper pattern behind sad posts going viral less often still stands, though its explanation is…