One Among Many

The self in social context

by Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D.

Your Chaotic Mind

Would you want to share free will with fruit flies? If so, there may be hope for you. If not, you need to accept that neither you nor fly boy have free will. You can still enjoy life, though. Read More

Attention: Debt!

Research shows that assets loom larger when net worth is negative, whereas debts loom larger when net worth is positive. I review the findings and show how a simple and unbiased heuristic can account for them. Read More

Money and Trust

Studying psychology in business and economics, my Italian students and I discovered some linkages between the psychology of money and the psychology of trust. Read More

Fuori Servizio

Rick Steves travels a lot in Europe and is followed around by a camera crew. I travel alone with a Nikon in my bag. Visiting Italy for a teaching gig raises a stream of psychological issues—most of them pleasant. Read More

Barrett's Banalogies

God cleverly continues to refuse being cast as a testable hypothesis. When scientists try to use their craft to prop of belief, the results are amusing. Read More

Disorderly Discourse

In earlier posts, I idiotically relied on rational arguments to dispute a line of reasoning that sought to prop up Christian theism with psychological science. No more. Here, I retreat to analogies. Read More

Anchoring Base Rates

To conclude the trilogy of posts on the representativeness heuristic, I here propose that base rate neglect can be reduced if base rates are first presented as judgmental anchors. Read More

Superficial Psychology: Undeep Thoughts and Paralipomena

Notes from April 2012 Read More

Recipe for Representativeness

If judgmental heuristics such as representativeness yield acceptable results most of the time, perhaps we should not fight so hard to keep them at bay. In this essay, I provide some background for a story on debiasing, which is yet to come. Read More

Remembering Representativeness

Probabilistic reasoning is hard; pattern recognition is easy. How do make your judgments? Let’s check in with Tom, Dick, and Harry... er, Jack, who taught us some lessons about what to do and what not. Read More

My Moment of Self-enhancement

Most people want to do well in work and love, and while we can all improve in an absolute sense—if positive psychology has merit—we cannot beat the logic of ranks. Only half can be better than average (i.e., the median). Statistical regression pulls us toward that average, but, as I will show, there is hope in the strategic manipulation of perspective. Read More

A Conspiracy of One

Monotheistic belief serves as an archetypal mindset from which others are derived and with which they are compared. Conspiracy theories are a case in point. If we turn this around, will we get an echo of Eco? Read More

Meanings of Error

How much can we learn from a single observation or experience? What is the difference between not finding life beyond Earth, finding life on Mars, and finding life and Mars and on Alpha Centauri? Read More

Just Desert

Setting aside for a minute your revulsion at military desertion, try to think about it rationally. Read More

Freud Gaming Jung

Psychoanalysis is a dangerous method, particularly for its practitioners. Jung broke with Freud when the elder refused to submit a dream for analysis. What went wrong? Luckily, there is another game in town: Game theory. Let’s play. Read More

An Intervention Illusion

When you study for a test and succeed to improve your score, this does not necessarily mean that you will also do better at the things the test predicts. This will happen only if studying for the test requires the acquisition of the skills needed to succeed outside of the testing room. Read More

Our Epistemological Nightmare

To get around our daily business, we need not ask big questions. Sometimes, however, these questions invade our slumber, as when science and religion get stir-fried together by well-meaning scholars such as Dr. Justin Barrett. Read More

Justification Light

Dr. Justin Barrett uses cognitive science not to prove the existence of god, but to prove that believers need no evidence. I prefer to put science in the service of skepticism, not complacency. Read More

Friends with Personalities

With the Big 5 personality traits unleashed, no one is safe. Today we take a look at the six friends from the eponymous TV show. If the professional Big-5ers can rate pets, bedrooms, and websites, we can rate fictional characters. With inter-rater reliability being as imperfect as it is, you may feel free to disagree with our results. Read More

Bem in Quantum Space

In a profile on him, his life, and his work at the frayed edge of science, Daryl Bem knows the difference between testing nil or null hypotheses and what it means in the grand scheme. Much is at stake. Can quantum theory help? Read More

Requiem for the Banal Business Book

How much can be learned from the success of business organizations? Are there universally valid principles to be extracted? A popular genre of business books says the answer is ‘Yes.’ Scientists with a background in psychometrics, judgment and decision-making, however, curb their enthusiasm. Welcome to the Larry David School of Business. Read More

A Paradox of Experimentation and Other Anadromous Thoughts

Research that presumably demonstrates “retrocausation” does no such thing. It rather throws the entire notion of causation into doubt. Can we recover from this? Read More

Kahneman in Quotes and Questions

In this post, I’m having a postmodern conversation with Danny Kahneman. What he says is from his book Thinking, fast and slow. What I say was made to fit after the fact. So it’s probably not fair, but perhaps it will get you to read the book and make up your own mind, fastly or slowly. Read More

What Is Your Work Worth?

It is good to value your work but how much will you get paid for it? Read More

Second Thoughts in the Lavatory

The design of public bathrooms requires a balance between functionality and privacy (hence the need to de-emphasize the “public” aspect). Creativity and humor can help take the edge off. Read More

Monotheistic Belief Is Not a Newcomb Problem

I respect personal claims of faith because they lie outside the realm of reason. In contrast, attempts to justify religious beliefs with the tools of probability theory of logic tend to run into problems within the first paragraph. Here’s another example of a way of thinking that is more magical than scientific. Read More

Belief is not evidence

Teaser: Professor Justin Barrett believes in a single personal god and thinks that cognitive science is on his side. That he must violate elementary logic to reach this conclusion is probably part of a cosmic plan. Read More

From Regret to Grief to Healing

I was going to title this post “Good Grief,” but I thought the probability of being misunderstood was too high. At any rate, grief is a serviceable alternative to regret. I continue to hold that regret is irrational and a bane on our emotional life. Read More

Does Regret Make You More Human(e)?

TED talks are used around the world for educational purposes. Some of them do a disservice to the field of psychology. Here, I consider one such talk that tries to make sense of the emotion of regret. Read More

Don’t bet on Pascal’s wager

To believe or not to believe? Pascal put the question as a wager but he committed his own gambler’s fallacy. Read More

Joachim Krueger, Ph.D., is a social psychologist at Brown University who believes that rational thinking and socially responsible behavior are attainable goals.

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About One Among Many

Questions of psychological interest pop up everywhere. My approach to blogging is promiscuous, opportunistic, and heterodox. I comment on a variety of issues, ranging from animal behavior to the human experience of guilt and happiness to philosophy of science. I draw on personal experience, recent public events such as movies or media debacles, and of course the peer-reviewed archive of our field.