Neuroscience
One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. One example is my failure at affective forecasting, such as believing that I will be happy for a long time after some accomplishment (e.g. publishing a new book), when in fact the happiness dissipates more quickly than anticipated. Another is succumbing to the male sexual overperception bias, misperceiving a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest. A third is undue optimism about how quickly I can complete work projects, despite many years of experience in underestimating the time actually required. One would think that explicit knowledge of these well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t.
David Buss is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas where he heads the Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology Area. Among the world's most highly cited evolutionary psychologists, his latest book is Why Women Have Sex.
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Return to menu for One Nagging Thing.
- Marilyn Davidson: Lost Opportunities
One nagging thing I still don’t understand about myself is why I didn’t ask my grandparents before they died, more about their childhoods? “Grandpa (R), you’re 100 now but what was it like being born in 1900 into a world where man couldn’t fly...
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After struggling mightily, and not particularly successfully, to have a thought about this, I broached a Friday after-work happy hour group and asked them what they would say about themselves. To a person, each looked uncomfortable with the mere question....
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I’ve had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling. Our love for children is so unlike any other human emotion. I fell in love with my babies so quickly...
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When my dear friend and colleague, Roger Brown, was alive he used to say that to him, I define the edge of the optimism continuum. I think my outlook explains my choice of research topics. Instead of describing what is, most of my work is aimed at exploring...
- One Nagging Thing You Still Don't Understand About Yourself
The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That's over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor...
Neuroscience
David Buss: Overcoming irrationality
One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. One example is my failure at affective forecasting, such as believing that I will be happy for a long time after some accomplishment (e.g. publishing a new book), when in fact the happiness dissipates more quickly than anticipated. Another is succumbing to the male sexual overperception bias, misperceiving a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest. A third is undue optimism about how quickly I can complete work projects, despite many years of experience in underestimating the time actually required. One would think that explicit knowledge of these well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t.
David Buss is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas where he heads the Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology Area. Among the world's most highly cited evolutionary psychologists, his latest book is Why Women Have Sex.
--
Return to menu for One Nagging Thing.
- Marilyn Davidson: Lost Opportunities
One nagging thing I still don’t understand about myself is why I didn’t ask my grandparents before they died, more about their childhoods? “Grandpa (R), you’re 100 now but what was it like being born in 1900 into a world where man couldn’t fly...
- Elizabeth Loftus: Nightmares
After struggling mightily, and not particularly successfully, to have a thought about this, I broached a Friday after-work happy hour group and asked them what they would say about themselves. To a person, each looked uncomfortable with the mere question....
- Alison Gopnik: Parenthood
I’ve had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling. Our love for children is so unlike any other human emotion. I fell in love with my babies so quickly...
- Ellen Langer: Optimism
When my dear friend and colleague, Roger Brown, was alive he used to say that to him, I define the edge of the optimism continuum. I think my outlook explains my choice of research topics. Instead of describing what is, most of my work is aimed at exploring...
- One Nagging Thing You Still Don't Understand About Yourself
The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue. That's over 900 quality, peer-reviewed psychology journal articles digested since 2003. To mark the occasion, the Digest editor...