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Inescapable Karma
In the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review this week, A. J. Jacobs explains how he managed to write so many book “blurbs” that his agent and editor had to stage an intervention. It’s a short, fun read...
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Luck vs Merit (Part 2)
This weekend Robert Frank wrote about the respective roles of luck and skill in achieving success in this Economic View column in The New York Times. Frank’s piece hits on many of the same themes as...
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The Psychology of Soda Bans
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about paternalism recently, since as the father of a one-year-old I have to do a lot of paternalizing (apparently spell check and I disagree on whether that’s a word). In...
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Choosing Poorly
Anuj Shah There’s a really interesting new paper out in Science by my colleague Anuj Shah at Booth (the business school at the University of Chicago, where I teach). It explores how poverty can change...
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It’s the Thought that Counts (sometimes)
My first post for the Chicago Booth website has just gone up and I wanted to share the link — it’s called Using Behavioral Science To Pick The Perfect Holiday Gift. It’s on research by Yan Zhang and...
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The Science of Gifts
Source: Jason Ford for The Boston Globe Is it possible to get gifts down to a science? With gift giving season upon us, there has been a flood of advice for consumers on how to navigate their purchases...
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Narrowing the Achievement Gap with a Psychological Intervention
Important!This is a re-post of a story originally published as a guest blog at Scientific American MIND. Thanks to @BoraZ and @iwickelgren for their hospitality. Image courtesy of Alex de Carvalho...
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Paul Rozin on Music, Food, and Sex
Paul Rozin I’m not sure how it’s possible that until yesterday I had never seen Paul Rozin speak. However it happened, I corrected a huge mistake by going to see him give an invited address at the...
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The Psychology of Nothing: Phantom Symptoms
“The Heart Attack” Season 2, Episode 10 Lovable anti-hero George Costanza is having a salad for lunch when he suddenly clutches at his chest and declares, “I think I’m having a heart attack!” His...
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Narrative Transportation
This is a draft of an article I submitted to Nautilus Magazine, a “new magazine on science, culture, and philosophy,” for their issue entitled In Transit. Nautilus already had plans to cover the...
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Odysseus Nudged: Some more thoughts
I wrote a piece for Big Think that came out on Monday and there were some additional thoughts that I wanted to share that didn’t make it into the original article. If you’ve already read the piece,...
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Pay Now Consume Later
This is a re-posting of my article from earlier today on my new blog at Big Think. As of this morning Random Assignment has a new home-away-from-home which you can visit here, but I’ll continue to post...
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Expecting Better
My friend and colleague Emily Oster’s new book, Expecting Better, came out last week. She dives into the data behind what your doctors and friends tell you about pregnancy and gives you the...
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The Secret Costs of Keeping Secrets
Photo credit: Sarah Horrigan via Flickr My first post for Nautilus’ blog, Facts so Romantic, is on new research by Clayton Critcher and Melissa Ferguson, about the costs of keeping secrets. The...
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