Linguistic Relativity — What Language Shapes and What It Doesn't
An examination of whether language shapes thought, from Sapir and Whorf to modern experimental evidence.
Category
Psychology
9articles followthis line of inquiry.
Articles in Psychology
Regret Theory — What Decisions Reveal About Counterfactual Pain
Regret theory shows that people evaluate choices by comparing outcomes to the paths not taken. The framework explains behaviors expected utility theory cannot predict.
The Paradox of Choice
More options do not always produce better decisions. This article examines the research behind choice overload and when fewer options lead to better outcomes.
Heuristics -- What the Program Got Right
Kahneman and Tversky's heuristics-and-biases program reshaped how people think about reasoning. The evidence is mixed.
The Mechanism That Doesn't Explain
The bystander effect is one of the most cited findings in social psychology. The theory used to explain it accounts for almost none of the observed effect.
The Observer Effect — What the Name Hides
The same term describes three unrelated phenomena across physics, social science, and machine learning. The name suggests a single concept. It is not.
The Dunning-Kruger Debate — What Overconfidence Really Is
The Dunning-Kruger effect claims that low ability produces inflated self-assessment. A growing body of research argues the effect is a statistical artifact.
The Threshold Problem — What Signal Detection Theory Reveals About Uncertainty
Signal detection theory separates how well we perceive from how willing we are to act. It reframes decisions under uncertainty around a single tradeoff that appears everywhere.
What an Affordance Actually Is
The concept of affordances explains how objects suggest their own use. This article traces the idea from ecological psychology to digital design.