This month, Business Insider have republished a couple of chapters from Mind Hacks the book (in case you missed it, back before the blog, Mind Hacks was a book, 101 do-it-at-home psychology experiences). The excerpts are:
1. Why one of these puzzles is easy and the other is hard – which is about the Wason Selection Task, a famous example of how our ability to reason logically can be confounded (and unconfounded if you find the right format to present a problem in).
2. Why this sentence is hard to understand – which shows you how to improve your writing with a bit of elementary psychology (hint: it is about reducing working memory load). Steven Pinker covers the same advice in his new book The Sense of Style (2014).
Both excerpts show off some of the neat illustrations done for the book, as well as being a personal nostalgia trip for yours truly (it’s been ten years!)
Links: Why this sentence is hard to understand + Why one of these puzzles is easy and the other is hard
Mind Hacks 