Ulterior Motives

How goals, both seen and unseen, drive behavior

Art Markman is a cognitive scientist at the University of Texas whose research spans a range of topics in the way people think. See full bio

October 30, 2009

Your actions affect what others do. Even when those others are infants.

Western culture tends to focus on the individual and on individual rights. We assume that people have the right to do what they would like, at least as long as those actions don't interfere with others. But, what does it mean for one person's actions to affect the actions of another? Read More

October 27, 2009

Categories, essentialism, race, and culture.

Placing something in a category and describing its properties have very different effects on the way we think about things. In my last post, I pointed out that calling someone a musician makes playing music seem much more central to their being-more essential-than just saying that they play music. What about categorizing people by their race? Read More

October 23, 2009

Categories, Essences, and Behavior Change

When we talk about things, we have to give them labels. Those labels end up having a big influence on the way that we think.. When we say that someone has depression, that seems to say more about them than just that they are sad, or have trouble sleeping, or has difficulty getting excited about positive events. The label suggests that there is something deep about that person that causes these symptoms. And in the case of depression, of course, it is true that having depression tends to cause all of these symptoms. Read More

October 20, 2009

Trauma and the benefits of writing about it

Psychological trauma is bad for your health. The stress of abuse, violence, or the unexpected death of a loved one can cause all sorts of health problems. People suffering after these events may stop working effectively in school or at their jobs. They may lash out at friends, family, and coworkers. They may experience significant illnesses as stress depresses their immune systems.

Why does psychological trauma have these long-lasting effects.? Read More

October 16, 2009

Unrealistic optimism about problem drinking is dangerous.

An important part of everyone's self-concept is a sense of how we compare to others in our behaviors. A common observation is that many people are overly optimistic in their judgments about themselves relative to others. For example, on average, people think they are more likely to be successful in business than others, or to be less likely to suffer from serious illnesses than others. Not everyone can be more successful in business than others, of course, so somebody in that sample must be being too optimistic.

What is the effect of this optimism on behavior? Read More

October 13, 2009

Thinking about weighty matters: Weight while thinking matters.

Starting in the 1990s, mainstream research in Psychology began to take seriously the relationship between mind and body. This research has sometimes led to some strange discoveries. Here's one. Read More

October 9, 2009

More information makes you more confident, if not more accurate

Confidence matters. We are much more likely to act in situations when we are confident. We make purchases based on confidence. We are also persuaded by others based on their confidence. A statement made confidently and forcefully is much more likely to sway our opinion than a statement that is hedged.

Presumably, the power of confidence lies in the belief that when people are more confident in an outcome they are more likely to be correct in their predictions. Read More

October 6, 2009

He walked up to me, he asked me to dance, and then he kissed me: Indirect causality in language.

When people tell us about events, they often focus on the who, the what, and the how of what happened. For example, a friend might tell us about a date she had the previous weekend, and describe her date, the restaurant, and the moonlit walk. The language we use, though, contains more than just a description of the event itself. It also contains information about why those events happened. This why information is there whether we intend it to be or not. Read More

October 2, 2009

A stock by any other name might not sell as well.

Reading the business pages over the last year, it is clear that a lot of investors did not know what they were buying. That is not to fault the investors entirely. There is far too much information out there for people to be able to inform themselves fully about every investment opportunity. In addition, it is clear that banks, and rating agencies, and companies were not entirely forthright in providing information about themselves.

But, if people are not using information about the health of companies to purchase stocks and bonds, what are they doing? Read More

September 29, 2009

You can’t blow off steam with video games, either.

In my last post, I talked about how it can be counterproductive to try to let out your anger through a violent act. The evidence I reviewed there suggested that letting off steam through violence can actually increase your future aggression. (By the way, there was a reply to my initial post by Stephen Diamond. I agree with Dr. Diamond that there is great value in long-term treatments to give people structure to deal with anger. I hope that nobody too my initial post to say that there aren't any positive ways to get beyond anger.)

But what if you try to channel that violent energy, say through video games? Read More

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Quite simply, cognition refers to thinking. There are the obvious applications of conscious reasoning—doing taxes, playing chess, deconstructing Macbeth—but thought takes many subtler forms, such as interpreting sensory input, guiding physical actions, and empathizing with others. The old metaphor for human cognition was the computer—a logical information-processing machine.

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