Concepts (page 77)
- The Intensity Formula
The intensity formula is Cal Newport's stated law of productivity in Deep Work in 2016, set at page 40: high-quality work produced equals time spent multiplied by intensity of focus. It is presented…
- The Intention-Behaviour Moderator
Past behaviour and stated intention do not compete for one fixed share of the explanation. Judith Ouellette, then at the State University of New York College at Cortland, and Wendy Wood, then at…
- The Interpretive Claim
An interpretive claim is a claim about what a set of agreed facts means, and in particular a claim about somebody's intent. It is not a research finding and it is not a finding of any other kind. It…
- The Jingle-Jangle Fallacy
The jingle-jangle fallacy names two errors that share a shape. Jingle is assuming that two measures carrying the same name are measuring the same thing. Jangle is assuming that two nearly identical…
- The Law of Small Numbers
The law of small numbers is the mistaken intuition that a small sample resembles the population it was drawn from. There is a real law of large numbers, which says that large samples converge on the…
- The Left-Digit Effect
The leftmost digit of a number carries more weight than its place in the number warrants. A price of 2.99 reads as nearer two than three, and a car showing 10,000 miles is priced as if it were in a…
- The Life Orientation Test
The Life Orientation Test is the short self-report questionnaire that almost the whole research literature on optimism and physical health is built on. Michael Scheier and Charles Carver published…
- The Limbic System
The limbic system is the name for a ring of structures, usually the amygdala, hippocampus, cingulate cortex and hypothalamus and their connections, treated as a single system for emotion. The…
- The Linear Mind
The linear mind is Nicholas Carr's name for the mode of thought he attributes to five centuries of print: sustained, sequential, able to follow a long argument to its end. He credits it with the…
- The Lipstick Effect
The lipstick effect is the claim that spending on beauty products, and on lipstick in particular, rises during recessions, because a small cosmetic purchase is the affordable substitute for the…
- The Long-Run Promotion Effect
The long-run promotion effect is the finding that a promotion can lift sales now and lower them later. In panel data on packaged goods, shoppers who saw more promotion grew more sensitive to price…
- The Machine Zone
The machine zone is Natasha Dow Schüll's name for the trancelike absorption that machine gamblers describe, a state in which daily worries, social demands and awareness of the body fade and the aim…