Maria Konnikova
Today marks my last blog for Artful Choice. It has been an exciting year of writing about decisions small and big and the forces that help shape them and make them what they are—and Big Think has provided a truly wonderful home, a welcoming and vibrant platform for which I couldn’t be more grateful ... Read More
Amidst the growing momentum of the election season, I catch myself thinking, with a worried look on my face: at the end of the day, what does a voting decision actually come down to? The reason for my worry is simple. I’ve spent a little too much time with the research of Princeton’s Alexander ... Read More
The crowd surges around you, lurching forward in one overpowering swell. There’s panting and shoving, sharp elbows and raised voices, clawing and tearing, frenzied looks and frazzled nerves. Light blaring in your eyes, tinny music blasting in your ears. And the nagging feeling that somewhere ... Read More
Can we be aware without actually paying attention? In other words, can our brains somehow imbibe visual information from the outside world without any conscious effort on our part? It would certainly be nice if that were the case. As it happens, the necessity of visual attention for visual ... Read More
These days, it seems like wherever you turn, there’s a story of a researcher who has gone over to the dark side. There was Marc Hauser at Harvard, who resigned after he’d been accused of eight counts of scientific misconduct. There was Frank Fischer, the Rutgers political scientist who committed ... Read More
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about just how powerful our beliefs about ourselves can really be. For now, I’m not worried about aging—the subject of Monday’s article—but I am worried about those areas where I may, unbeknownst to myself, be holding back my own development, or at the very least ... Read More
As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming information into a cohesive whole. And as we make sense of people, we typically engage in the exact same ... Read More
In most circumstances, narcissism doesn’t go over well. We tend not to like individuals who exhibit arrogance or too much dominance or hostility—all traits associated with the narcissist. But there’s one big exception to the rule: leadership. For some reason, when we rate narcissists on leadership ... Read More
This past Saturday, October 15th, marked a momentous occasion in the history of cleanliness: the fourth annual Global Handwashing Day. Yes, it exists. Established by the Global Public Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap in 2008, it has since been celebrated by schools, families, and ... Read More
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted in October, but has been reposted here to illuminate the research approach of Daniel Kahneman, a recent guest on Big Think. On Monday evening, I went to see Daniel Kahneman give a talk on his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman ... Read More
Last December, a series of provocative studies appeared in Science. The finding: imagine eating a food, over and over and over, and you will eat less of it when you are actually given the opportunity to do so. At first glance, it seems completely counterintuitive. Don’t we get hungry when we watch ... Read More
Today, another Ig-Nobel Prize installment, this time from the actual winner in Psychology, Karl Halvor Teigen. The question: why do we sigh? Is a sigh, as that all-time greatest song in the all-time greatest film suggests, just a sigh? Or is it a signal of something more? In a series of studies ... Read More
Yesterday evening, the (in)famous IgNobel prizes were awarded to ten lucky winners. And today, I’d like to honor the winner in Literature (though the nature of the theory is such that it may as well have been Psychology, as is often the case), Dr. John Perry. The achievement: the theory of ... Read More
Two people are talking to each other. One nods his head to emphasize a point. The other follows suit, just a moment later. One crosses his foot over his knee. Soon, the other is doing the same. One shifts to the right. The other, across from him, shifts to the left, mirroring the movement. A few ... Read More
Recently, while working on a piece about memory and smell, I came upon a concept that I’d never before heard about: blind smell. I’d read often enough about blindsight, the ability of individuals who are blind to detect visual stimuli even though they have no conscious experience of seeing, but ... Read More
Can the way we think actually change the wiring, activation patters, and physical landscape of our brains? In other words, can our mind, in a sense, control or at least influence the direction of our brain? Our brains are incredibly flexible. Long after the exuberance (fast growth) and the ... Read More
A few months ago, I wrote about the ability of smell to regularly influence our choices, often without any awareness on our part. But smell is not the only culprit. Indeed, one of the senses that can most drastically influence our perceptions and our decisions, also without our being aware of the ... Read More
When we remember, what is it that we’re remembering? Do we try to recapture the appearance of a moment, like a photograph or a postcard that shows us a perfect still image of a point in time? Do we try to incorporate motion, a movie reel that we can fast-forward, pause, and rewind at will? Do we ... Read More
One of my favorite movies is When Harry Met Sally. I can watch it over and over and love it every single time—maybe even more than I did before. There’s a scene that will be familiar to any of the movie’s fans: Harry and Sally have just embarked on their drive to New York City and Harry starts ... Read More
Good morning. How are you feeling right now? Like, on a scale of 0 (very bad), to 100 (very good), where would you be? 75? 90? 20? Thanks for letting me know. Now, would you mind telling me what you’re doing right now? Interesting. Just one more question. Are you thinking about something other than ... Read More
About Maria Konnikova
Maria Konnikova is a writer living in New York City, where she works on an assortment of non-fiction and fiction. Her first book will be published by Viking in 2013. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Psychology at Columbia University. Before returning to school, she worked as a producer for the Charlie Rose show on PBS. Most mornings, Maria can be found in a yoga studio. Most afternoons, she can be found writing, reading, or conducting definitive explorations into the workings of the human mind. She lives in the West Village with her husband. She can be reached at maria.konnikova [at] bigthink [dot] com. Read more of her work on her website. Follow on Twitter @mkonnikova