5-minute rule
The 5-minute rule is a technique of committing to just five minutes on a task to get past the peak of dread that comes before starting.
How to Start a Task in 5 MinutesEvery term in one plain sentence. How it works is in the 2-minute article behind it.
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Asch conformity experiment
The Asch conformity experiment was a 1951 study in which people often named an obviously wrong line because everyone else in the room had confidently done so.
How the majority effect worksB
Body shame
Body shame is shame driven by a mechanism that tracks how your body looks in other people's eyes, even when no one is around.
Where Body Shame Comes FromBystander effect
The bystander effect is the tendency for people to be less likely to help someone in trouble when more people are present, because responsibility feels shared.
Why no one helps on the streetC
Childhood amnesia
Childhood amnesia is the loss of memories from the first years of life; most people date their earliest memory to around age 3.
Why your first years come back in fragmentsChoice paralysis
Choice paralysis is when there are so many options that you end up choosing none of them.
What Is Choice Paralysis?Counterfactual thinking
Counterfactual thinking is comparing what happened with an outcome that almost happened, and that imagined alternative sets how you feel about the result.
Why Silver Feels Worse Than BronzeD
Decision fatigue
Decision fatigue is the tendency of a tired brain to choose more cheaply: comparing less, taking the first option and saying no more often.
How Fatigue Warps Your DecisionsDecoy effect
The decoy effect is when adding an option almost no one chooses makes a nearby option look like an obvious bargain.
What Is the Decoy Effect in MenusDefault effect
The default effect is the tendency to stick with the preset option, so the way a choice is set up decides where most people end up.
Why Are There So Many Organ Donors in Austria?Deindividuation
Deindividuation is the loss of the sense of being a distinct, recognizable person in a crowd, when the group's norm takes the place of your own.
Why Shame Disappears in a CrowdF
Foot-in-the-door technique
The foot-in-the-door technique is a persuasion tactic in which agreeing to a small request makes a later, bigger request harder to refuse.
Why a volunteer asks for a signature firstG
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic aimed not at the facts but at your ability to see them, turning an argument about events into one about you.
What Gaslighting Really IsH
Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect is the idea that people change their behavior simply because they know they are being observed or studied.
What Happened at the Factory Where They Turned On the LightsI
Inner critic
The inner critic is a judging inner voice built from other people's past reactions that predicts disapproval before anyone else notices a mistake.
Where Your Inner Critic Comes FromInner speech
Inner speech is the silent talk in your head that, as Lev Vygotsky described, grows out of the way young children comment aloud on themselves in adults' words.
How Your Parents' Words Live On in Your HeadL
Loneliness spiral
The loneliness spiral is a self-reinforcing loop in which loneliness makes you see coldness in others, you pull away, and your contacts shrink further.
What is the loneliness spiralLow-ball technique
The low-ball technique is a persuasion tactic in which someone gets you to agree to attractive terms and then makes them worse once you have decided.
What is the low-ball techniqueM
Macbeth effect
The Macbeth effect is the idea that doing something dishonest makes people want to cleanse themselves physically; larger replications did not confirm it.
Why Lying Makes You Want to Wash Your HandsMarshmallow test
The marshmallow test is an experiment in which a child can eat one treat now or wait about 15 minutes and get two.
What Happened to the Kids from the Marshmallow TestMilgram experiment
The Milgram experiment was a 1961 Yale study in which ordinary volunteers gave what they thought were electric shocks because an experimenter told them to go on.
Why ordinary people shocked a stranger in 1961N
Negativity bias
Negativity bias is the brain's tendency to process negative information faster and hold on to it longer than positive information, an old safety setting.
Why You Believe the Worst Version of YourselfNorm of reciprocity
The norm of reciprocity is a social rule found in almost every society studied: when you receive something, you feel you have to give something back.
How the sense of obligation worksP
Paradox of choice
The paradox of choice is when a wider selection attracts more attention but makes people less likely to decide and buy.
Why 24 jams sell worse than 6Parasocial relationship
A parasocial relationship is a one-sided bond with a person on screen whom you know well but who knows nothing about you; the term dates from 1956.
Why You Turn on a Show in an Empty ApartmentParkinson's law
Parkinson's law is the observation that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
Why Work Takes the Entire DeadlinePlanning fallacy
The planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate how long your own tasks will take, even when you remember similar ones running late.
What Is the Planning FallacyPretexting
Pretexting is a social engineering tactic in which someone contacts you from an invented role, with a prepared story and believable details.
What Is PretextingProcrastination
Procrastination is putting off a task to escape the unpleasant emotion tied to it, such as boredom, uncertainty or fear of doing it badly.
Why We ProcrastinatePublic shaming
Public shaming is a punishment that puts a person on display at a set place and hour so everyone sees, destroying their reputation for good.
Why Shame Was Considered Worse Than PrisonS
Secondhand embarrassment
Secondhand embarrassment is the embarrassment you feel for someone else's slip-up, even when that person is not embarrassed at all.
What Is Secondhand EmbarrassmentSecure attachment
Secure attachment is a bond in which a child is quickly soothed by a caregiver's presence after a separation and then goes back to exploring and play.
What Secure Attachment IsSilent treatment
The silent treatment is withdrawing from contact without giving a reason or a timeframe, leaving the other person to guess what they did and explain.
How Silence Manipulates YouSocial comparison
Social comparison is judging yourself by other people when no objective measure exists, an idea psychologist Leon Festinger proposed in 1954.
Why Comparing Yourself to Others Poisons Your LifeSocial engineering
Social engineering is gaining access to systems or data by persuading people who already have it, rather than by breaking the technology.
How People Get Hacked, Not ComputersSunk cost fallacy
The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to keep going with something because of what you've already spent, even though it can't be recovered.
What the Sunk Cost Trap IsW
Wisdom of the crowd
The wisdom of the crowd is the effect whereby the middle of many people's guesses lands closer to the truth than most individual estimates.
How 787 people guessed a bull's weightZ
Zeigarnik effect
The Zeigarnik effect is the tendency to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.
Why a Server Forgets a Paid Order