Life expectancy has mushroomed around the globe in recent decades, primarily because of advances in medicine, public health, and living conditions. Factors such as improved access to clean water, vaccination programs, and better nutrition have all contributed to this trend. Medical advancements in areas such as cancer treatment and heart disease have also played a […]
Listening to the chirps and trills of birds can decrease anxiety and paranoia, according to a new study out of Germany. The study, published on October 13, 2022, tested the effects of traffic noise and birdsong on 295 randomly selected participants, who listened to a few minutes of typical city traffic noise and bird choruses at […]
What goes around, comes around is the old saying. I have been hearing and reading about reinvented capitalism as if it were a new idea. Reinvented capitalism is not a new concept. We have discussed the idea of incorporating social and environmental responsibility into capitalism for decades. In the 1970s, the concept of corporate social […]
“She ain’t pretty. She just looks that way,” are the song lyrics from an old song from 1990 written and performed by the Northern Pikes, which I heard on the radio the other day. The song suggests that the girl the writer falls in love with is beautiful on the outside, but she is not […]
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.– Bertrand Russell Fear can certainly be a powerful emotion that can drive people to act in irrational or superstitious ways. It can also lead people to engage in cruel behaviour, whether to […]
The backfire effect is a cognitive bias, meaning that you can use general debiasing techniques in order to counter it effectively. Such strategies include, for example, increasing people’s awareness of this bias, using simpler explanations, and changing the way you present information. This means that when you’re talking to people to change their stance on […]
People experience the backfire effect because of the process that they go through when they encounter information that contradicts their pre-existing beliefs. Essentially, when a person encounters information which suggests that their current beliefs are wrong, they feel threatened, which causes them to generate a variety of negative emotions. This is especially likely when the […]
There are several things that you can do to reduce the bias blind spot in other people, in order to help them become more aware of their biases and of how those biases influence their reasoning: Explain what the bias blind spot is, and how it affects people, potentially using relevant examples. Explain that everyone […]
Have you ever been in a discussion with someone and realized that you would never change their mind because you cannot agree on the facts? We know that we have biases, but we assume, incorrectly, that we are aware of our biases and assume that they’re less susceptible to biases than others. All of us […]
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear. We often define courage as the ability to face and overcome fear. It is not about being completely free of fear, but about being able to confront and deal with it effectively. Fear is a natural emotion that everyone experiences, and it […]
