Showing only Notes + Links tagged psychology
If I had to compare my spending on books to one of the states of matter (solid, liquid, or gas) it would probably be gas, because my book-buying consistently expands to fill my bank balance. What I mean to say is that I just bought We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion by Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris and it’s amazing. You can look at spreads from the book online and also play around with the wonderful application on which the book is based.
The way [Pandora] hooked me in with the free hours made me feel like this is something I should probably pay for because I clearly value the service they are providing. Thinking about it more, this perhaps might be an interesting model for publishers. Not sure how it would work or if tracking time spent on a website is the way to go or not, but it would be interesting if content producers could come up with easily digestible measurements to show consumers how much they value the service or content that’s being provided. This would weed out the fickle viewers and for the power users it would make them realize how much they actually value the content they are consuming. The goal is always to hook your dedicated power users.
There are clearly some challenges to something like this, but from a psychological point of view Pandora has put me in a position where I understand how much I value their service and the great benefits I will receive if I subscribe. Regardless if I end up paying a subscription fee or not, they have made a compelling offer, and no matter what, that’s what content producers and service providers need to do. Make compelling offers and show consumers how much they value the content or service that’s being provided.
Bryan Formhals — la pura vida: You Are Running Out of Free Hours
The $6 purchase price of the McSweeney’s iPhone app comes with delivery of free iPhone formatted web content everyday forever and six months of exclusive, bespoke (designed) content once a week. It’s totally worth it. If they keep up the good job, I have no qualms about renewing for another $6 (from within the app, charged to iTunes!) when my subscription lapses…I’ve been hooked.
I jotted down some thoughts on the night of the iPad announcement about why it’s awesome but my opinions have basically been reiterated across the web. This is an incredible opportunity (big screen, touch based, app store, always online) to design interactions!
I was skimming through Apple’s iPad Human Interface Guidelines last night (Google it if you want to find a leaked PDF) and one part that struck me as particularly interesting was to let users play with your application before asking them to provide any more information than the system provides. If it’s still necessary later, do it as soon as you can, but not until the user has gotten a test drive and run into a situation that requires filling out a form—or in this case, buying a paid subscription.
5 emotions you never knew you had →
(fiero, amae, nache, schadenfreude, ennui)
Language is the strangest thing.
(via jennilee)
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
- Bertrand Russell. Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia
Nothing new, but it’s been making the internet rounds again recently. Finally reblogged out of convenience from the Tumblr dashboard! (Is that really what it’s come to?)
(via giantrobotlasers)
Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.Apophenia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vimeo has done a great job cultivating quality of a different sort. It’s full of music, art and wonderful stuff like this. Really, the “features” that Vimeo offers are social and psychological, not technical. That’s the right move, because they can’t keep up with YouTube on video quality. No one can.
Anyway, this isn’t a huge insight—just another example of the weird physics of digital media.
Robin Sloan — Like a Wal-Mart shirt with hand-sewn seams « Snarkmarket
These “psychological features” are exactly what Jonathan Harris is talking about in his World Building vignettes, they direct the quality and type of interactions that happen within an online social space.
The Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.
They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.
“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.
The assumption that all doors are locked « SnarkmarketLocking the front door is a ritual we all perform which provides a general assumption of front-door-locked-ness. Almost like vaccination. One person does it, it’s meaningless; everybody does it, it’s a big deal. And also like vaccination because, once everybody does it, you largely get the benefits even if you don’t!
Locking the front door as collective action. Hmm. I still don’t think it makes any sense. I still do it.
Can the ecstasy of art overwhelm you to the point of madness? →
Basically the exact opposite of the stress relieving effect of art on the psyche. Too much of a good thing…?
(via sympathyfortheartgallery)
Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State →
Duh! I love when science confirms my own unconventional beliefs.
(via Kottke)
You have to get bad in order to get good.Paula Scher on Failure | Psychology Today
Anderson describes an experiment conducted by the M.I.T. behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of “Predictably Irrational.” Ariely offered a group of subjects a choice between two kinds of chocolate—Hershey’s Kisses, for one cent, and Lindt truffles, for fifteen cents. Three-quarters of the subjects chose the truffles. Then he redid the experiment, reducing the price of both chocolates by one cent. The Kisses were now free. What happened? The order of preference was reversed. Sixty-nine per cent of the subjects chose the Kisses. The price difference between the two chocolates was exactly the same, but that magic word “free” has the power to create a consumer stampede.
Malcolm Gladwell reviews Free by Chris Anderson: Books: The New Yorker (via tedr)
I posted brief notes on Ariely’s TED Talk earlier this year, but I definitely recommend watching his talk, which is available in video format at TED.com.
Once I tried on the pants, I became an implicit owner of them. I stared at myself in the mirror and admired the fit, the wash, etc. I thought about how good they would look with my shoes. I contemplated wearing them to various upcoming events and all the strangers who would look at my pants and think “Those are nice pants!” In other words, I spent a few minutes imagining my life with these new jeans and, once that happened, the pants suddenly became much more valuable. I mentally endowed myself with the object and didn’t want to lose something that I didn’t even own. As a result, the ridiculous price tag ($170 for Levis!) no longer seemed so ridiculous. The lesson? Don’t try something on that you don’t want to buy.
The Endowment Effect : The Frontal Cortex
Or, alternately, make sure you make it easy for people to “try on” things that you want to sell.
The brain is necessary for consciousness. Of course! Just as an engine is necessary in a car. But an engine doesn’t “give rise” to driving; driving isn’t something that happens inside the engine. The engine contributes to the car’s ability to drive. Consciousness is more like driving than our philosophical tradition leads us to expect. To be conscious is to have a world. The fact is, you and I don’t have what it takes to make a world on our own. We find the world, we don’t make it in our brains.
The brain is essential for our lives, physiology, health and experience. But the idea that it is the whole story, or even the key to understanding the story, is not a scientific conclusion. It’s a prejudice. Consciousness requires the joint operation of the brain, the body and the world.
Alva Noe, You are not your brain | Salon
Fascinating interview with Alva Noe, author of “Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness”