priming

I've written a few times about the effects of pictures of attractive women on decision-making by men. In Bikinis, Babes, and Buying, we learned that guys who looked at pictures of bikini-clad women made impulsive decisions. In A…

OK, here's a quick task: take a minute to write down some common characteristics and behaviors that superheroes might exhibit... (DON'T read further until you have jotted down some ideas.) Done? You should know that I have…

  Erotic images sell better than pictures of office supplies, and a lot better than photos of hairy spiders. Who knew? Actually, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Stanford researchers led by neuroeconomics prof Brian Knutson have…

In our recent article on The Mating Mind, we described how "romantically primed" men were much more likely to spend lots of money than men who were not so primed, and than women in either condition. Separately, we've also noted that…

We all know what the placebo effect is - give a group of patients a sugar pill instead of a medication with active ingredients, and some of them will show an improvement in their symptoms. Drug researchers treat the placebo effect as an…