Anchoring Bias: Key Takeaways The anchoring bias causes people to use the first they learn as a reference point for making future judgments and decisions. This anchoring effect is highly prevalent across a wide range of situations–and it’s also very difficult to overcome. What Is the Anchoring Bias? The anchoring bias is a type of … Read more
People are continuously inundated with endless amounts of information. External stimulation, internal thoughts, emotions, and other forces all compete for our attention. In order to deal with this, people utilize selective attention to tune out things that they don’t need to focus on and concentrate on the things that are important. In this article, learn … Read more
Cognitive dissonance is discomfort or distress caused by conflicting beliefs, behaviors, feelings, ideas, or values. It is an uncomfortable psychological state that people experience when they have an inconsistency between how they think and how they act. This feeling of dissonance may be experienced as anxiety, stress, or discomfort. In order to relieve the discomfort … Read more
Cognitive bias is an unconscious systematic pattern of thinking that can often result in errors in judgment. These biases stem from the brain’s limited resources and need to simplify the world in order to make faster decisions. Such biases are often the result of limitations or problems in memory, attention, and information processing. While such … Read more
A short attention span is a common problem for many people. It happens to the best of us. You’re sitting in class or in a meeting and you suddenly find yourself daydreaming, losing focus, and not paying attention. In this article, learn more about what you can do to improve a short attention span. Effects … Read more
While conventional views of human intelligence focus on an individual’s intellectual potential, the theory of multiple intelligences suggests that intelligence is more than just a single general mental ability. First introduced by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, the theory suggests that people may possess … Read more
Forgetting is a memory problem that plagues us all. Little wonder then why researchers have devoted so much time and energy to understanding why we forget and the cognitive process behind memory failures. Researchers have explored a number of different theories and explanations for why people forget things. Sometimes the information is never properly stored … Read more
For each and every thing you do during any given day, you can guarantee that memory plays a role. This is why memory problems can be so troublesome. After all, who would you be without your unique memories of events, people, and experiences? The fact is that memory plays such a pervasive and pivotal role … Read more
Trying to learn something new? Have a big exam tomorrow? New research suggests that sleep plays a pivotal role in your brain’s ability to learn new information. So the next time you have a test, try studying first before getting a good night’s sleep instead of staying up all night cramming. Because sleep improves learning, … Read more
We all know that regular exercise is good for your body, but there is a growing body of evidence that physical activity is also good for your brain. In recent years, a number of studies with both animal and human participants have demonstrated that exercise improves the ability to remember and learn. But does exercise … Read more