This Sunday is “May the Fourth Be With You” Day or more commonly known as “Star Wars Day.” Our graduate student Troy Campbell combines his research and personal experience to analyze why this day and Star Wars itself means so much to many. …
by Troy Campbell Today, many individuals, governments and businesses are eager to use behavioral economics to improve lives, happiness, and profits. So, how can one get a good beginning handle on behavioral economics? Reading up and taking a class can never substitute…
I am a scientist and occasional season ticket holder at Duke. So on Friday, I was understandably sad with the Duke loss. But as I watched the rest of America celebrate on Twitter, I felt no anger toward everyone else’s joy. Because…
The Effect When we order a fancy drink at Starbucks (or some fancier coffee house) with funny language, we believe we are sophisticated connoisseurs. But when others do the exact same thing, we just see them as annoying poseurs. The Problem But…
For better or worse, the man Sigmund Freud remains the image of psychology. Though over one hundred years have passed since Sigmund Freud started to unveil his ideas, YouTube’s insanely popular Crash Course YouTube series made Freud the near entire focus and…
Let me set the scene: It’s midway through the annual Society for Judgment and Decision Making conference in Toronto. Inside a conference room, behavioral and health scientists passionately discuss how to help people make healthier decisions while the event staff set up…
Every day of the year, American shoppers act irrationally. On Black Friday, however, shoppers’ irrationality and wildness climb to dangerously high levels. Why does Black Friday lead shoppers to grab and fight, especially when the stakes are often as low as fifty…
This week Troy visits the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and examines how thinking in categories can lead people to have less fun and make potentially dangerous mistakes. To read more on this topic of research see the original “Border Bias”…
Every year, March Madness gives us an underdog story and millions flock to a momentary allegiance with a college they could not locate on a map. In the past it has been George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth University and Butler, and this year…
The pricing structure of Nintendo’s Wii U could manipulate shopper psychology via the decoy effect (see here and here for more on the effect). The Wii U is mainly available in two forms: a $350 Deluxe version and a $300 Basic, and without…
