Q:
if you’re in low light, you’ll see better if you don’t look right at the area you’re trying to see. (c)
Q:
Progressive disclosure ...
instructional design model called Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) (c)
Q:
In order to not overwhelm people, you need to provide context. (c)
Q:
Psychologists call this filtering confirmation bias. People tend to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. They tend to gather evidence and remember information selectively. The more strongly they believe something, the stronger the confirmation bias is. (c)
Q:
Mental models (c)
Q:
THE MORE UNCERTAIN PEOPLE ARE, THE MORE THEY DEFEND THEIR IDEAS (c)
Q:
Stories imply causation ...
People are quick to assign causality. Your brain assumes you have been given all the pertinent information and that there is causation. Stories make it even easier to make this causal leap. If you are looking to convince people of a certain idea or persuade them to take a certain action, then using a story that implies causation will help people to be convinced. (c)
Q:
I had a belief that said, “I am a strong person. I can handle any crisis.” I realized that I was making decisions that would eventually cause more crises, at least partly so I could overcome them to prove to myself that I was strong.
I decided right then to change my belief. I said out loud, “My life is easy and graceful.” I began to make decisions that would make my life easier. (с)
Q:
The old brain asks, “can I eat it? can I have sex with it? Will it kill me?” (c)
Q:
There is a story that makes the rounds in psychology classes about how a class of students at a college used the behaviorist idea of shaping to get the professor to leave the classroom in the middle of his lecture: The students arranged this among themselves ahead of time, before class started. When the professor came in to start the class, the students ignored him (no reinforcement) unless he looked toward the door. At some point in the lecture, he randomly looked toward the door. When he did, the students looked attentively at him for a moment. Every time he looked toward the door, they would look up attentively (looking up attentively was the reinforcement). Before too long, the professor was looking at the door a lot. At that point, the students stopped reinforcing by looking toward the door. Instead, they would look up attentively only if the professor took a step toward the door. At some point in the lecture, he took a step toward the door, and then the students looked up attentively.
This shaping of the professor’s behavior continued (he moves closer to the door, he moves his arm toward the door, he touches the door, and so on) until the professor actually left the room.
I’m pretty sure it’s an urban legend that was created by a psychology professor who was trying to explain shaping.
The official description of shaping is “the differential reinforcement of successive approximations.” The idea is that if you want to establish a new behavior, you have to first reinforce an earlier behavior that will lead to the behavior you are looking for. Once the earlier behavior is established using reinforcement, then you stop reinforcing that behavior and only reinforce a behavior that moves you closer to the final, desired behavior. (c)
Q:
Concession builds commitment too
Cialdini (1975) stopped people on the street and asked them to chaperone a group of troubled youth on a one-day trip to the zoo. Only 17 percent of people said yes.
Some of the time, he first asked people to spend two hours a week as a counselor for the youth for a minimum of two years (a larger request). In that case everyone said no. But if he then asked them to chaperone a group of troubled youth on a one-day trip to the zoo, 50 percent agreed. That is nearly three times the 17 percent who agreed when they were only asked to chaperone. That’s concession working.
But Cialdini found an interesting side effect. Eighty-five percent of the people in the concession group actually showed up, compared with only 50 percent of the group that did not go through the concession process. Concession increases commitment to the action. (c)