Why We Act

Ideas from the frontiers of science and inquiry

• What Red Actually Does

  The attraction result (red enhancing attractiveness) has failed to replicate across 830 men and a pre-registered study. What survived is the framework: red reduced unhealthy food consumption…

• Why the First Price You See Decides What You Pay

  The first number you encounter sets the scale for later judgments, surviving even expertise. Anchoring appears reliably only when framed as a plausible price. The best defence is subject knowledge…

• Why You Never Change the Setting

  Switching pension schemes to automatic enrolment raised participation sharply. The organ donation evidence is real but not one-way. Two 2022 reanalyses cut the wider nudge literature down hard, but…

• The Office That Stopped People Talking

  Two corporate headquarters were instrumented with wearable sensors before and after moving to open plan. Face-to-face interaction fell by roughly seventy per cent. The sensors detect proximity and…

• Never Show a Fool Your Work Until It Is Complete

  The proverb says the danger is the audience. Two literatures say the danger is being seen at all, and being illegible

• The Courage Problem

  The founding story of the bystander effect does not survive its own archive, and people intervene in nine out of ten real fights

• Why You Finish the Series You Stopped Enjoying

  The sunk cost effect is real, it is smaller than its reputation, and nobody has ever measured the version of it you are living on a Sunday evening