Neuroscience
I generally believe that we learn from experience. However, a recent study I did with Karlene Hanko repeats a finding from Kahneman and Snell, that people are very poor at predicting how their liking will change for a new product (in our case, two new foods and two new body products) after using it for a week. We predicted that the parents of our college undergraduates would be better than their children at predicting their hedonic trajectory, but 25 more years of self experience did nothing for them. Nor for me. Every night, I bring home a pile of work to do in the evening and early morning. I have been doing this for over 50 years. I always think I will actually get through all or most of it, and I almost never get even half done. But I keep expecting to accomplish it all. What a fool I am.
Paul Rozin is Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where he also acts as co-director of the school's Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict.
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Return to menu for One Nagging Thing.
- Paul Broks: What Should I Do?
There’s plenty I don’t understand about myself, but nothing nags. Paradoxically, the deeper I got into neuropsychology the less interested I became in the details of my own inner workings. I’m not sure why. It certainly is not because I arrived...
- 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...
- 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...
Neuroscience
Paul Rozin: Time management
I generally believe that we learn from experience. However, a recent study I did with Karlene Hanko repeats a finding from Kahneman and Snell, that people are very poor at predicting how their liking will change for a new product (in our case, two new foods and two new body products) after using it for a week. We predicted that the parents of our college undergraduates would be better than their children at predicting their hedonic trajectory, but 25 more years of self experience did nothing for them. Nor for me. Every night, I bring home a pile of work to do in the evening and early morning. I have been doing this for over 50 years. I always think I will actually get through all or most of it, and I almost never get even half done. But I keep expecting to accomplish it all. What a fool I am.
Paul Rozin is Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where he also acts as co-director of the school's Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict.
--
Return to menu for One Nagging Thing.
- Paul Broks: What Should I Do?
There’s plenty I don’t understand about myself, but nothing nags. Paradoxically, the deeper I got into neuropsychology the less interested I became in the details of my own inner workings. I’m not sure why. It certainly is not because I arrived...
- 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...
- 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...