Category: Experience

💎 On our attention becoming scarcer in the age of information (inattention blindness)

In one study of simulated driving led by David Strayer and colleagues at the University of Utah, subjects talking on their phones “missed seeing up to 50 percent of their driving environments, including pedestrians and red lights.” (They were also ten times more likely to not stop at a stop sign.) Another experiment by Strayer and colleagues found that people talking on their phones had slower reaction times than drivers with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit.

What causes these mental deficits? The scientists blame inattention blindness, which occurs whenever the amount of information streaming into the brain exceeds our ability to process it.

Excerpt from: The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior by Shlomo Benartzi and Jonah Lehrer

💎 On our tendency for lower comprehension of texts when read online versus in printed media (keep it simple)

In 1985, at the dawn of the computer age, the psychologist Susan Belmore conducted a simple experiment on twenty undergraduates at the University of Kentucky. The students were exposed to eight different short texts and then asked to answer a series of questions about what they’d just read. Four of the passages appeared on paper (a sheet of white bond, single-spaced, forty-seven characters per line) and four appeared on the monitor of an Apple II Plus 48k computer. Belmore was curious if reading the text on a screen might influence both the speed of reading and levels of comprehension.

The results were depressing, at least if you were an early adopter of computer technology. “These data indicate that reading texts on a computer display is not equivalent to reading the same texts on paper,” Belmore wrote. “Overall, college students took 12 percent longer to read and comprehended 47 percent less with computer-presented text.”

Excerpt from: The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior by Shlomo Benartzi and Jonah Lehrer

💎 On there being no magic number of times an activity needs to be done to fix a bad habit (just keep doing it)

Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t a magic number of repetitions that result in a habit forming. Some say that you need to repeat an action fifty times or for twenty-one days, but very few researchers have actually looked at this question systematically. And those that have done tend to find that there isn’t a clear-cut answer to the question. In one of the few studies to have tracked the formation of healthy habits in real-world settings, researchers studied ninety-six students who had just moved to university and were encouraged to repeat behaviours in response to consistent cues (such as ‘going for a walk after breakfast’). They found that habits formed in some of the students after eighteen days, but for some it took much longer – up to 254 days. The average was sixty-six days.

Excerpt from: Think Small: The Surprisingly Simple Ways to Reach Big Goals by Owain Service and Rory Gallagher

💎 On photos of people with dilated eyes are more attractive (but men are not sure why)

In a recent experiment, men were asked to rank how attractive they found photographs of different women’s faces. The photos were eight by ten inches, and showed women facing the camera or turned in three-quarter profile. Unbeknownst to the men, in half the photos the eyes of the women were dilated, and in the other half they were not. The men were consistently more attracted to the women with dilated eyes. Remarkably, the men had no insight into their decision making.

Excerpt from: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

💎 On how rewards can crowd out intrinsic motivation (encouraging people in relation to tasks they dislike)

To test this theory, a few years ago I ran a study in which two groups of people were asked to take part in an experiment in which they spent an afternoon picking up litter in a London park. Participants were told that they were taking part in an experiment examining how best to persuade people to look after their local parks. One group were paid handsomely for their time, while the others were only given a small amount of cash. After an hour or so of backbreaking and tedious work, everyone rated the degree to which they had enjoyed the afternoon. You might think that those clutching a large amount of well-earned cash would be more positive than those who had given their time for very little money.

In fact, the result was exactly the opposite. The average enjoyment rating of the handsomely paid group was a measly 2 out of 10, while the modestly paid group’s average ratings were a whopping 8.5. It seemed that those who had been paid well had thought, ‘Well, let me see, people usually pay me to do things I don’t enjoy. I was paid a large amount, so I must dislike tidying the park.’

Excerpt from: 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot by Richard Wiseman

💎 On the value of operational transparency in product design

For example, the bright red Powerball in Finish dishwashing tablets, as well as the salient red centre of Anticol’s medicated throat lozenges, illustrates “this is the hardworking bit.” When we see these products there’s no question in our minds where the unique value or effort is. They’re practically radioactive. As Rory Sutherland writes in Alchemy, the same is true of striped toothpaste.’ Psychologically, the red, blue and white coloured stripes give us a clear signal that the toothpaste is performing more than one function, aiding the belief that this single toothpaste can offer the trifecta of strong teeth, fresh breath and …

Excerpt from: Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking ancient innovation to solve tomorrow’s challenges by Sam Tatam

💎 On Oasis creatively avoiding having to issue refunds

When technical glitches marred their Manchester concert in June 2009, mega-band Oasis turned to the symbolic power of a signature to rescue them. Recognising the gig’s disruptions, the band sent out an eye watering 1m pounds worth of cheques in reimbursement. “People can obviously cash them in,” a spokesperson told the Manchester Evening News after the band offered the crowd a refund. Their genius? Anticipating that fans would never take them to the bank, every cheque was hand signed by Oasis frontmen Liam and Noel Gallagher. With pen and ink alone, the band saved themselves a fortune.

Excerpt from: Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking ancient innovation to solve tomorrow’s challenges by Sam Tatam

💎 On the importance of timely feedback

For example, the clever people from Dulux paint recognised that an absence of visual feedback also wreaks havoc for exhausted DIYers looking to decorate white ceilings with white paint (it’s near impossible to know where you have already painted!).

Addressing this issue, Dulux created NeverMiss, a ceiling paint that goes on pink (providing clear feedback against white ceilings) and dries white, helping painters create a uniform finish. Likewise, to prevent ‘creepers’ edging over the speed limit, radar-enabled speed displays providing real-time feedback now reduce speeding by up to 10%. There are nappies that signal when they’re soiled, tissues that change colour when you’re nearing the end of the box, razorblades that turn green when it’s time to change the blades, and even tyres that wear away to reveal the message “change tyre” when your tread becomes dangerously thin.

Excerpt from: Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking ancient innovation to solve tomorrow’s challenges by Sam Tatam

💎 On how putting numbers in perspective makes them more memorable

Two scientists at Microsoft Research, Jake Hofman and Dan Goldstein, believe in this idea so strongly that they’ve spent the better part of a decade spearheading a project known as the Perspectives Engine with a simple goal: develop tools that make numbers easier for humans to understand.

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, delivers millions of facts a day in response to queries. The Perspectives team wondered whether some simple contextual phrases would help people understand and remember their numerical search results.

So they did something basic: Instead of just reporting that Pakistan has an area of 340,000 square miles, they added a brief “perspective phrase,” something like “that’s about the size of 2 Californias.” And then, at time scales ranging from a few minutes later to a few weeks later, they tested people to see if they remembered the fact they had been shown.

Some perspective phrases were better than others. Simpler comparisons from more familiar states or countries led to better memory for the facts. But ALL phrases were better than nothing. Even a slightly unwieldy comparison was more effective than a number alone.

Excerpt from: Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers by Chip Heath and Karla Starr