I was reading an academic article about persuasion science. I paused when I got to the end of a sentence. I wasn't sure I understood it. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I was sure I hadn't understood it. (Academic articles are frequently...
Heuristics are common understandings, which are mental shortcuts that spare the brain from expending energy on the hard mental work of analyzing facts and information. Many heuristics are truisms that people have decided are correct, regardless of whether they actually are correct. For example, the...
In Persuasion Science for Trial Lawyers, I wrote about the research that explains how the brain decides whether to engage in critical thinking or jump to a conclusion based on prior experience, bias or stereotyping. I explored how we might be able to present facts...
There are “the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns” which is how former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld described some things we know that we don’t know, and other things that we don’t know that we don’t know. In the general public, there are people...
Academic psychologists have been unlocking the mysteries of how people accept or reject persuasion and arrive at decisions. But, like lawyers and their legalese, social scientists often use a dizzying array of overly-complicated descriptions. The concepts and discoveries are important, but often explained in what...