Jonah Lehrer's Blog, page 31
February 22, 2009
Smell
For the last week, I've been suffering from one of those head colds that won't go away. The worst part of the cold isn't the raw nose, or the sinus headaches, or the scratchy throat - it's not being able to smell. I really hate not being able to smell. A world without scent is just so much less interesting, like a color photograph that's faded to a monochromatic gray. You know something is missing but you don't know what it is. Just this morning I was frying bacon and was seized by this peculiar
February 21, 2009
Even More Voodoo
Over at Mind Matters, I recently interviewed Matthew Lieberman, a social neuroscientist at UCLA. The previous week I asked Ed Vul, lead author of the "Voodoo Correlations" paper a few questions, and I wanted to make sure I gave some of the scientists he criticized a chance to rebut the accusations. (Here's some excellent background reading on the Voodoo controversy.) I think Lieberman makes some excellent points:
The argument that Vul and colleagues put forward in their paper is that correlatio
February 19, 2009
March Madness
Being on book tour means that I watch way too much SportsCenter, since that's what I do when I can't sleep. And so, because it's mid-February, I've noticed that the ESPN anchors are already talking endlessly about March Madness, college basketball and brackets. (Of course, this is also because they have little else to talk about. Football season is over, baseball has yet to begin, and the NBA is mired in its mid-season lull.) What most impresses me about the college basketball analysts is that t
February 17, 2009
Microexpressions
Paul Ekman, the eminent scientist behind micro facial expressions, dissects the unconscious tics of deceit used by A-Rod:
Ms. Couric asked Mr. Rodriguez if he had ever been tempted to use illegal drugs. He answered with a simple "No" accompanied by what might be a microfear expression, according to Dr. Ekman - a horizontal stretching of the lips that is often an effort to conceal fearfulness."The fear of being disbelieved is the same as fear of being caught," Dr. Ekman said. "He is afraid tha
February 16, 2009
The Color of Creativity
The brain is like a Swiss Army knife, stuffed full of different mental tools that are well suited to different situations. Sometimes, we want to flex the prefrontal cortex, and really exert our rational muscles. And then there are other situations (like picking a strawberry jam) where thinking too much can be a real problem, and we should rely instead of the subtle signals emanating from the emotional brain.
It's no surprise that how we think - the particular mode of thought that we lean on at
Book News
Self-promotion alert! If you're allergic to self-aggrandizing blog posts, then you'll probably want to stop reading now. But just a quick note to remind interested people that I'll be in the Bay Area this week, talking about decision-making, before returning to the East Coast and holding events in NYC and Boston next week. Also, there have been some nice reviews of How We Decide in recent days. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Burton (author of the excellent "On Being Certain) says:
Lehre
