Ian Ayres, Super-Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart (Bantam 2007) at 112, explains that “The human mind tends to suffer from a number of well-documented cognitive failings and biases that distort our ability to predict accurately.” Ayres gives three examples, each of which crops up in-house.…
To upgrade the mental capabilities of in-house counsel, encourage them to sweat. A fast-beating heart is a high RPM brain. Exercise “improves the blood’s access to specific brain regions and stimulates learning cells to make brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which acts like cerebral Miracle-Gro for neurons.” Personally, I sprinkle…
Some research suggests that our bias toward higher-priced goods may have something to do with the way our brains link price with pleasure — and thus leads people to make assumptions about expensiveness signaling quality. If it’s pricey it must be premium. A column in the NY Times, Feb. 9,…
You would have a hard time deciding among all the posts on this blog about decisions. A number of them step back from specific tools and techniques to broader aspects of in-house decision-making (See my posts of Aug. 24, 2006: multiple facets of in-house decisions; March 6, 2006: six generic…
It is fascinating to mull over what causes what. A few comments on this blog have adverted to cause and effect (See my posts of Nov. 11, 2007 on four contexts that vary by cause and effect; May 14, 2005 on “proof by anecdote”; and Jan. 1, 2008 on agency…
For years, psychologists have studied and confirmed the familiar phenomenon of so-called psychological reactance. An article in Cal. Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Fall 2007 at 164, about gender stereotypes in negotiation defines that phenomenon as “the heightened desire people feel to assert their freedom when they perceive it is being…
An article in Cal. Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Fall 2007 at 146, does a good job of explaining prediction markets, which in part are a way to aggregate information (See my posts of Feb. 16, 2006 on collective prediction markets; Sept. 13, 2005 on an early version of this; Dec.…
We are all very susceptible to the actions of our peers when it comes to making a decision. This idea comes from Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 49, Winter 2008 at 84, where an article gives many examples of the powerful influence on us of our colleagues’ actions. Actually, the point…
My initial forays were in 2006 (See my post of Feb. 15, 2006 with 15 references in nine categories; and May 30, 2006 and three references cited.). Since then many more posts have set out ideas about how our brains operate and the consequences for lawyers. A few blog posts…
An author in Historically Speaking, Vol. 8, May/June 2007 at 15, wrestling with notions of complexity in history (See my post of Jan. 1, 2007 for a related comment.), offers the metaphor of maps. “Just as mapping can be carried out at many scales from the local to the global,…