A continuing bilingual series examining everyday psychological phenomena, cognitive biases and research evidence while distinguishing intuition, correlation, causation and explanatory limits.
- Does Seeing a Weapon Always Impair Eyewitness Memory?
- Does Knowing You Are Observed Always Improve Performance?
- Is Handwriting Notes Always Better for Learning Than Typing?
- The Spotlight Effect: Why Do We Think Everyone Noticed?
- Why Can a Clock's Second Hand Seem to Pause When You First Look?
- Why Can a Familiar Name Stay on the Tip of the Tongue?
- Why Can a Good Deed Make Us Relax Our Standards?
- Why Doesn't a Good Outcome Necessarily Mean a Wise Decision?
- Why Can the Same Wine Sometimes Taste Better at a Higher Price?
- Why Do We Seek Supporting Evidence Once We Have a Hypothesis?
- Why Can a Longer Unpleasant Experience Be Remembered More Favourably?
- Why Negative Memories Can Come More Easily in a Low Mood
- Why Can a Near Miss Feel Worse Than Missing by Far?
- Why Can a New Place Suddenly Feel as Though We've Been There Before?
- Why Can a Phone Seem to Vibrate When It Did Not?
- Why Does a Repeated Word Suddenly Feel Strange?
- Why Can a Silent Phone Seem to Vibrate in Your Pocket?
- Why Can a Small Yes Increase Later Compliance?
- Why Can a Smell Suddenly Bring Back the Past?
- Why Does a Growing Sound Feel More Urgent Than a Fading One?
- Why Does a Specific Knowledge Gap Make Us Want the Answer?
- Why Does a Tune Keep Looping in the Mind?
- Why Does a Watch Fade from Awareness After a While?
- Why Can an Audience Help Familiar Tasks but Hurt New Ones?
- Why Can an Inferior Third Option Change What We Choose?
- Why Is a Familiar Face Harder to Recognise Upside Down?
- Why Does the Mind Stay with the Previous Task After Switching?
- Why Is Background Conversation Harder to Ignore Than a Steady Hum?
- Why Can Background Music with Lyrics Disrupt Reading?
- Why Is ‘Baker’ Easier to Remember as a Job Than as a Surname?
- Why Can Being Full Make Future Hunger Seem Easier to Control?
- Why Big Changes Can Go Unnoticed
- Why Can Both Partners Feel They Do More of the Housework?
- Why Might More Bystanders Make Each Person Wait?
- Why Does Choosing a Week's Snacks at Once Increase Variety?
- Why Can Corrected Misinformation Still Shape Judgement?
- Why Do Default Options Quietly Shape Our Choices?
- Why Can Describing a Face Make It Harder to Recognise?
- Why Do Easy-to-Recall Events Seem More Common?
- Why Can Effort Accelerate as We Near a Goal?
- Why Do We Forget What We Came for After Entering Another Room?
- Why Does Explaining Reveal That We Do Not Really Understand?
- Why Does Expressing Gratitude Seem More Awkward in Advance?
- Why Does Earlier Information Shape a First Impression?
- Why Can Focusing on One Task Hide an Unexpected Event?
- Why Can Frequent Success Create an Illusion of Control?
- Why Do Future Feelings Seem as Though They Will Last So Long?
- Why Can Greater Effort Make an Outcome Seem More Valuable?
- Why Do Groups Repeat Shared Information and Miss Unique Clues?
- Why Can Hard-to-Pronounce Names Seem Riskier?
- Why Does Harmful Inaction Often Seem Less Wrong than Action?
- Why Are If–Then Plans Easier to Remember?
- Why Can Individual Effort Fall in a Group?
- Why Does Knowing the Answer Hide a Beginner's Difficulty?
- Why Can Known Odds Feel Safer Than Unknown Odds?
- Why Later Misinformation Can Enter a Memory
- Why Can Like-Minded Discussion Make Opinions More Extreme?
- Why Can a Different Lip Movement Change What We Hear?
- Why Can Losing $50 Feel Weightier Than Gaining $50?
- Why Do Low Moods Bring Back Unpleasant Memories?
- Why Are Memories from Youth and Early Adulthood So Numerous Later in Life?
- Why Can Memory Extend Beyond a Photograph's Boundaries?
- Why More Choice Can Make Choosing Harder
- Why Can More Options Make a Choice Harder?
- Why Can More Witnesses Make Each Person Hesitate?
- Why Can Moving in Sync Make People Feel Closer?
- Why Naming an Emotion Can Quiet It Down
- Why Does Negative Information Grab Our Attention?
- Why Can Neuroscience Jargon Make an Explanation Seem Better?
- Why Can “Nine Winners” Feel Better Than a 10% Chance?
- Why Do Observers Sometimes Blame People Who Suffer?
- Why Can One Good Trait Colour an Entire Impression?
- Why Does the Size of One Serving Shape How Much Feels Right?
- Why Can Orders Make Us Want to Resist?
- Why Does the Past Seem Predictable Once We Know the Outcome?
- Why Do Things Feel More Valuable Once We Own Them?
- Why Can Praising Intelligence Make Failure Feel Riskier?
- Why Can Reading Words Aloud Make Them Easier to Remember?
- Why Can Remembering Slightly Change a Memory?
- Why Can Remembering Together Reduce Total Recall?
- Why Can Repeated Imagination Make an Event Feel Real?
- Why Can Repetition Make a Claim Feel True?
- Why Can an Ordinary Song Sound Better After a Few Plays?
- Why Does Closing the Book and Testing Yourself Often Beat Rereading?
- Why Can Returning to a Study Context Aid Recall?
- Why Can More Rewards Sometimes Make Us Want to Do Less?
- Why Does Seeing Someone Yawn Make Us Want to Yawn?
- Why Are Self-Generated Answers Easier to Remember?
- Why Is Self-Relevant Information Easier to Remember?
- Why Can New Memories Become More Stable After a Night’s Sleep?
- Why Might Sleep Help Preserve New Word Pairs?
- Why Are Four Spaced Reviews Easier to Retain?
- Why Can Stepping Away Help Solve a Problem You're Stuck On?
- Why Is It Harder to Stop After We Have Already Invested So Much?
- Why Suppressed Thoughts Return
- Why Are the Beginning and End of a List Easier to Remember?
- Why Does the First Number Pull Later Judgements Towards It?
- Why Can the Return Journey Feel Shorter Than the Way Out?
- Why Can the Same Personality Description Feel Personal to Everyone?
- Why Can the Same Proposal Seem Worse When It Comes from an Opponent?
- Why Can a Second Target Vanish Just After the First?
- Why Do Things We Build Ourselves Feel More Valuable?
- Why Does Thinking Stay Slow Just After Waking?
- Why Can “Today” Reverse a Choice between Sooner and Later Rewards?
- Why Can Two People's Memories Become More Alike After Discussion?
- Why Can Two Rare Events Seem Related?
- Why Do Unfinished Tasks Keep Returning to Mind?
- Why Does Another Person’s Progress Sometimes Inspire Us and Sometimes Discourage Us?
- Why Can an Urgent Minor Task Crowd Out a More Important One?
- Why Do We Avoid Bad News Even When It May Be Useful?
- Why Does Watching the Clock Make Time Drag?
- Why Can We Justify a Choice We Did Not Make?
- Why Do We Explain the Same Behaviour Differently?
- Why Do We Follow a Majority That Is Wrong?
- Why Do We Hear Speech Sounds That Noise Has Erased?
- Why Do We Overestimate How Many People Agree with Us?
- Why Do We Overestimate How Much Others Notice Our Mistakes?
- Why Do We Remember a Fact but Forget Its Source?
- Why Do We Remember Our Choices as Better Than They Were?
- Why We Think Everyone Is Watching Us
- Why Do We Think Others Can See How Nervous We Are?
- Why Do We Think Others Can See Our Nervousness?
- Why Do We Think We Can Read Others Better Than They Can Read Us?
- Why Do We Unconsciously Copy Another Person’s Gestures?
- Why Do We Underestimate How Long Our Own Tasks Will Take?
- Why Do We Underestimate How Long Tasks Will Take?
- Why Do We Underestimate How Much a New Conversation Partner Liked Us?
- Why Do We Underestimate the Impact of Small Kindnesses?
- Why Do When-and-Where Plans Make Action More Likely?
- Why Can ‘You Must’ Make People Less Willing?
- Why Can Your Own Name Break Through a Noisy Room?
- Why Can Your Own Thirst Make Another Person Seem Thirstier?