Once I thought I was wrong but I was mistaken. It’s a classic expression which is both a play on words and recognition that it’s very hard for us to admit we’ve made a mistake. Kathryn Schulz, author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error,” claims you can’t just admit your mistakes but…
In graduate school I conducted a psychology study on sports recall that showed participants could remember every Super Bowl/World Series/Final Four team over the previous 10 years. What’s more, with a little work, some of them could remember the score, the most valuable player, or even the date the game took place. While I was…
If you had $100 to spend to make yourself happy, would you buy something or spend it on a memorable experience? According to a Cornell paper entitled “To do or to have: That is the question“, the things you own don’t make you as happy as the things you do. The authors provide three primary…
Catch the twist in the title? If you do a person a favor, you would expect that person to like you more. However, the research shows something different. If you do someone a favor, you tend to like that person more as a result. The reason is that we justify our actions to ourselves by…
We glorify leadership and encourage everyone to be leaders. There are hundreds of books on leadership, a plethora of expensive leadership consultants, and even a pithy saying about being the lead dog in the sled. But we can’t all be leaders. After all, then there would be no one to follow the leaders. And without…
The numerosity heuristic can ruin your diet. According to numerosity, people pay more attention to the number of units rather than the type of units which leads to faulty conclusions. Research shows we will pay more for a 7-day vacation than a one week vacation, and will complain less about a flight that is delayed for…
Have you ever made dinner reservations at multiple restaurants and then forgotten to cancel the ones that you didn’t use? While multiple reservations might be convenient for diners, no-shows cost restaurants thousands of dollars per month. The most common way to reduce these losses is to take customers’ credit card information at the time of…
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. In English, this is a popular phrase that suggests you can’t get something for nothing. (Readers, is there a similar saying in other languages?) Like many common phrases, its origin is shrouded in mystery. At the heart of the phrase, the concept of a “free lunch” refers…
Learning about the numerosity heuristic can save you money. As a three-time CEO, I’ve had a lot of experience with incentive stock options and have been appalled by how poorly they are understood by employees. Many employees fixated on the number of shares they were granted, rather than the percentage of shares outstanding. They would multiply their…
This weekend’s Wall Street Journal contained an article by former Chrysler and General Motors executive Bob Lutz called “Life Lessons from a Car Guy.” Lutz believes that different kinds of organizations require different kinds of leaders. A loosely-connected conglomerate like General Electric requires a leader with vision and portfolio management skills; investing/divesting lines of business,…