the candle problem

28Aug09

Dan Pink talked to TED about motivation. He focused on the candle problem, and on modifications of it done by Sam Glucksberg which looked at how reward affected performance. The results: with problems like this, extrinsic reward makes you slower. Pink rightly draws the conclusion: intrinsic motivation is what we need for a lot of [...]

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Tags: attention, brain, candle, economics, emotion, mind, motivation, paradox, Pink, psychology, zemblanity

not noticing

31Mar09

How we don’t notice things, how perception is very very selective, is not only demonstrated by a vast array of social psychology experiments, it’s the subject of entertaining and convincing demonstrations. Like this famous one: Another “look out for cyclists” ad from Transport for London works on the same principle:

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Tags: attention, awareness, brain, mind, noticing, perception, psychology, test, video