Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who instinctively resist change aren't always stubborn or fearful — they're often the ones whose early environment taught them that unpredi…

Every workplace has one. A new system gets announced, or a new supplier, or a new seating plan, and one person goes quiet in ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who over-explain themselves in ordinary conversations aren't insecure or needy — they often grew up with adults who required exhaustive justific…

Exhaustive explanations for minor things aren't a sign of insecurity but often a learned survival strategy from childhoods ...
Silicon Canals

In a field experiment at a car wash, 300 customers received loyalty cards requiring 8 paid visits for a free wash — 34% finished when the card had 10 spaces with 2 alrea…

Two loyalty cards required the same eight purchases, but customers followed through at different rates. The endowed progress ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who find it hard to disconnect from work when they get home aren't workaholics or ambitious overachievers — they're often people who learned that being ...

When work won't leave your mind at dinner, it may not be ambition talking—it's a deeper need to prove your worth through constant availability.
Silicon Canals

The folly of debt

The folly of debt sounds like the opening of a sermon, and taken too broadly it is simply wrong. Plenty of debt is sensible: ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says quiet retirees who seem to have retreated from the world often haven't retreated at all, they've simply stopped going to places that required them t…

There is one on every street. He ran something once. A department, a shop floor, a crew of eighteen. Now he is in the garden ...
Silicon Canals

“Sorry, but I can’t talk right now”

In recalled conversations, people who had stopped replying reported feeling worse than the people waiting on them predicted, ...
Silicon Canals

At Harvard, men paid to assemble Lego Bionicle models built an average of 10.6 when their finished work stayed on the desk — but only 7.2 when the experimenter dismantled it ...

A small Harvard experiment found that men built more Lego models when their finished work remained intact. The result raises a precise question about effort and visible progress.
Silicon Canals

Research suggests people who still look young after 60 aren't always the ones with the best genes, they may also be the ones who spent decades treating their bodies …

Somewhere on the internet right now there is a photograph of two 61-year-old women sitting side by side. They are identical ...
Silicon Canals

In 1998, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek donated 74 Hollywood Hills acres worth $2 million, nearly doubling local parkland and protecting trails and a wildlife corridor fo…

In 1998 Alex Trebek donated 74 Hollywood Hills acres valued at $2 million to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, nearly ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who quietly dream of starting over in life aren't weak or ungrateful — they have often spent years living by other people's expectations befo…

A friend told me last month, on a rooftop in Bangkok with the traffic grinding away eight floors below, that she sometimes ...
Silicon Canals

Across 355 cities in 40 countries, researchers handed in 17,303 supposedly lost wallets — and adding cash raised the share of recipients who contacted the owner from 40% to ...

A 17,303-wallet field experiment found that adding cash increased owner-contact rates. The study measured emails and explored the role of self-image and concern for others.