Concepts (page 74)

  • The Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self

    Two selves, and only one of them votes. The experiencing self lives through the moments and would answer "does it hurt right now?". The remembering self keeps score afterwards, tells the story, and…

  • The Five Pillars of Mental Toughness

    The five pillars of mental toughness are a United States Air Force pilot-training syllabus, described from the inside by Hasard Lee in The Art of Clear Thinking: preparation practised to reflex…

  • The Five-Factor Model

    The five-factor model is the mainstream structural model of personality. It describes people on five continuous dimensions rather than sorting them into kinds: openness, conscientiousness…

  • The Flynn Effect

    The Flynn effect is the sustained rise in measured IQ across the twentieth century, roughly three points per decade, found in nearly every country with long-run test data. It is named after James…

  • The Focusing Illusion

    Daniel Kahneman's own one-sentence version, and he intended it to be quotable, is that nothing in life matters quite as much as you think it does while you are thinking about it. Direct attention at…

  • The Four Attachment Styles

    Secure, avoidant, resistant and disorganised. Four labels from a twenty-minute laboratory procedure for one-year-olds, which have since been borrowed by an adult questionnaire tradition that…

  • The Four Psychometric Standards

    The four psychometric standards are Benjamin Hardy's framing of what a proposed personality theory has to satisfy before anyone uses its results: are the categories reliable, are they valid, are…

  • The Four Types of Scarcity

    Mindy Weinstein's The Power of Scarcity splits scarcity into four types: supply (only a few were made), limited edition (this version will not return), time (the offer ends soon) and demand (other…

  • The Four-Day Week

    Four working days at five days' pay, on condition that staff find ways to genuinely complete the work. The condition is not a footnote, it is the design: the deal is not fewer hours for less output…

  • The Fourfold Pattern

    Cross gains against losses, and high probability against low probability, and you get four cells. Each has its own risk attitude and they are not the same attitude. People are not risk averse. They…

  • The Frequency Illusion

    The frequency illusion is the impression that something you have only just noticed has become frequent. The thing has not changed in how often it occurs. What has changed is how much of it a person…

  • The Fundamental Attribution Error

    The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to explain what someone did by what they are like, and to underrate the situation that produced the behaviour. The finding behind the name comes…