The friendship paradox

Reading today about illusory superiority to improve the Wikipedia article, I came across something tangential but intellectually delightful.
Most people have fewer friends than their friends (on average) have.
When I first read it, it sounded impossible, but it’s a practically inevitable fact.
It’s not specifically about friendship, but a mathematical fact about any relation which is symmetrical [...]

The biased search for confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is the bias to seek for, interpret and remember information in ways that confirm our existing beliefs rather than genuinely test them. In general, it’s an irrational preference for information that matches our expectations. This is one of the first biases I learned about, but recently I’ve been reading up on it in [...]

Why there are so many idiots on the road?

You know the experience. You’re in your car, just trundling along when, as you cross the junction… “WHOA! He just came out of nowhere! If I hadn’t braked, that would have been a collision. Why do they let these idiots on the road?”

Some of the research on bias examines driving. In particular, there are experiments [...]

Homophobia and hypocrisy

From mentioning breasts earlier in the week, I now turn to penises. In a study that deserves a great deal of publicity, psychologists used a questionnaire to identify a group of men with strongly negative attitudes to homosexuality, and another group of men who were comfortable with it. The men watched various kids of erotic [...]

Optimistic Bias

Some quotes on optimistic bias, taken from David A. Armor and Shelley E. Taylor (2002) “When Predictions Fail: The Dilemma of Unrealistic Optimism” in Thomas Gilovich (et al.) (Eds.) Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgement:

“Students expect to receive higher scores on exams, at least when those exams are still some time away, then [...]

Irrational optimism ruins your health, work and life

I’ve just run into this paper: David Dunning, Chip Heath, Jerry M. Suls (2004) “Flawed Self-Assessment. Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace”. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (3), 69–106.
It’s a review paper summarising a range of research on superiority bias and other self-regarding biases and applying it [...]

Scriptural Violence Can Foster Aggression

Lots of people are concerned at the effect screen violence has on viewers: does it make them aggressive in real life? Well, what about violence in the Bible, specifically violence sanctioned by the ultimate moral authority, God? The National Secular Society points to a controlled study in Psychological Science, finding that Scriptural Violence Can Foster [...]