NOTES

NOTE ON THE ENDNOTES

Scientists make their living by evaluating evidence, and come to provisional conclusions based on the weight of that evidence. I say “provisional” because we acknowledge the possibility that new data may come to light that challenge current assumptions and understanding. In evaluating published data, scientists have to consider such things as the quality of the experiment (and the experimenters), the quality of the review process under which the work was assessed, and the explanatory power of the work. Part of the evaluation includes considering alternative explanations and contradictory findings, and forming a (preliminary) conclusion about what all the existing data say. For many claims, it is possible to locate published findings in the research literature that contradict or support a given idea; no single study is ever the whole story. “Cherry-picking” data to make a point is considered one of the cardinal sins of science.

Here, where I cite scientific papers to support a particular scientific point made in this book, I am presenting them as examples of the work that supports the point, not as an exhaustive list. Wherever possible, and to the best of my ability, I have studied a broad range of papers on a topic in order to understand the weight of the evidence for a claim, but have included only representative papers here. Listing every paper I read would make the endnotes section ten times longer, and far less useful to the general reader.

INTRODUCTION

every conscious experience is stored somewhere in your brain Goldinger, S. D. (1998). Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. Psychologial Review, 105(2), 251.

and, Hintzman, D. L. (1988). Judgments of frequency and recognition memory in a multiple-trace memory model. Psychological Review, 95(4), 528.

and, Magnussen, S., Greenlee, M. W., Aslaksen, P. M., & Kildebo, O. Ø. (2003). High-fidelity perceptual long-term memory revisted—and confirmed. (2003). Psychological Science, 14(1), 74–76.

and, Nadel, L., Samsonovich, A., Ryan, L., & Moscovitch, M. (2000). Multiple trace theory of human memory: computational, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological results. Hippocampus, 10(4), 352–368.

openness to new experience, conscientiousness Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48(1), 26–34, p. 26.

predictor of many important human outcomes Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262–274, p. 262.

including mortality, longevity Kern, M. L., & Friedman, H. S. (2008). Do conscientious individuals live longer? A quantitative review. Health Psychology, 27(5), 505–512, p. 512.

and, Terracciano, A., Löckenhoff, C. E., Zonderman, A. B., Ferrucci, L., & Costa, P. T. (2008). Personality predictors of longevity: Activity, emotional stability, and conscientiousness. Psychosomatic Medicine, 70(6), 621–627.

educational attainment Hampson, S. E., Goldberg, L. R., Vogt, T. M., & Dubanoski, J. P. (2007). Mechanisms by which childhood personality traits influence adult health status: Educational attainment and healthy behaviors. Health Psychology, 26(1), 121–125, p. 121.

criteria related to career success Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The big five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1–26.

and, Roberts, B. W., Chernyshenko, O. S., Stark, S., & Goldberg, L. R. (2005). The structure of conscientiousness: An empirical investigation based on seven major personality questionnaires. Personnel Psychology, 58(1), 103–139.

better recovery outcomes following surgery Kamran, F. (2013). Does conscientiousness increase quality of life among renal transplant recipients? International Journal of Research Studies in Psychology, 3(2), 3–13.

Conscientiousness in early childhood Friedman, H. S., Tucker, J. S., Schwartz, J. E., Martin, L. R., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., Wingard, D. L., & Criqui, M. H. (1995). Childhood conscientiousness and longevity: Health behaviors and cause of death. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(4), 696–703, p. 696.

and, Friedman, H. S., Tucker, J. S., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., Schwartz, J. E., Wingard, D. L., & Criqui, M. H. (1993). Does childhood personality predict longevity? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(1), 176–185.

more Westernized and complex Goldberg, L. R., personal communication. May 13, 2013.

and, Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, M., Kaplan, H., & Lero Vie, M. (2013). How universal is the Big Five? Testing the five-factor model of personality variation among forager–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(2), 354–370.

CHAPTER 1

Satisficing: Simon, H. (1957). Part IV in Models of man. New York: Wiley, pp. 196–279.

Warren Buffett’s home: Nye, J. (2013, January 21). Billionaire Warren Buffet still lives in modest Omaha home he bought for $31,500 in 1958. Daily Mail.

In 1976, the average supermarket stocked Waldman, S. (1992, January 27). The tyranny of choice: Why the consumer revolution is ruining your life. The New Republic, pp. 22–25.

we need to ignore 39,850 items Trout, J. (2005, December 5). Differentiate or die. Forbes.

one million products Knolmayer, G. F., Mertens, P., Zeier, A., & Dickersbach, J. T. (2009). Supply chain management case studies. Supply Chain Management Based on SAP Systems: Architecture and Planning Processes. Berlin: Springer, pp. 161–188.

showed poorer impulse control Vohs, K. D., Baumeister, R. F., Schmeichel, B. J., Twenge, J. M., Nelson, N. M., & Tice, D. M. (2008). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited-resource account of decision-making, self-regulation, and active initiative. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(5), 883–898.

“. . . more processing power than the Apollo mission control.” Overbye, D. (2012, June 5). Mystery of big data’s parallel universe brings fear, and a thrill. The New York Times, p. D3.

the equivalent of 175 newspapers Alleyne, R. (2011, February 11). Welcome to the information age—174 newspapers a day. The Telegraph.

and, Lebwohl, B. (2011, February 10). Martin Hilbert: All human information, stored on CD, would reach beyond the moon. EarthSky. Retrieved from http://earthsky.org

34 gigabytes or 100,000 words every day Bohn, R. E., & Short, J. E. (2010). How much information? 2009 report on American consumers (Global Information Industry Center Report). Retrieved from http://hmi.ucsd.edu/

85,000 hours of original programming Lyman, P., Varian, H. R., Swearingen, K., Charles, P., Good, N., Jordan, L. L., & Pal, J. (2003). How much information? 2003 (University of California at Berkeley School of Information Management Report). Retrieved from http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu

and, Hilbert, M. (2012). How to measure “how much information”? Theoretical, methodological, and statistical challenges for the social sciences. International Journal of Communication, 6, 1042–1055.

6,000 hours of video every hour Hardy, Q. (2014, January 8). Today’s webcams see all (tortoise, we’re watching your back). The New York Times, p. A1.

It consumes more bytes than all Nunberg, G. (2011, March 20). James Gleick’s history of information. The New York Times Sunday Book Review, p. BR1.

120 bits per second This estimate derives independently from Csikszentmihalyi (2007) and the Bell Labs engineer Robert Lucky, who made an independent estimate that regardless of the modality, the cortex cannot take in more than 50 bits/second—within an order of magnitude of Csikszentmihalyi’s. Csikszentmihalyi explains his estimate: “As George Miller and others have suggested, we can process 5–7 bits of information in one apperception; each apperception takes at least 1/15th of a second; hence 7 × 15 = 105 bits/second. Nusbaum has calculated that understanding verbal material takes on the average 60 bits/second.”

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Nakamura, J. (2010). Effortless attention in everyday life: A systematic phenomenology. In B. Bruya (Ed.), Effortless attention: A new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action (pp. 179–189). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

and, Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007, May). Music and optimal experience. In G. Turow (Chair), Music, rhythm and the brain. Symposium conducted at the meeting of The Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts, Center for Arts, Science and Technology, Stanford, CA.

and, Csikszentmihalyi, M., personal communication, November 8, 2013.

and, Lucky, R. (1989). Silicon dreams: Information, man, and machine. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

and, Rajman, M., & Pallota, V. (2007). Speech and language engineering (Computer and Communication Sciences). Lausanne, Switzerland: EPFL Press.

so much misunderstanding Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007, May). Music and optimal experience. In G. Turow (Chair), Music, rhythm and the brain. Symposium conducted at the meeting of The Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts, Center for Arts, Science and Technology, Stanford, CA.

It’s also no wonder that we seek music so purposefully. Music is a rare case of our being able to attend to more than two people at a time because of the structure of harmony and the way in which people can play music together without impacting its understandability.

terrestrial vertebrate biomass Dennett, D. C. (2009). The cultural evolution of words and other thinking tools. In Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 74, 435–441.

and, MacCready P. (1999). An ambivalent Luddite at a technological feast. Retrieved from http://www.designfax.net/archives/0899/899trl_2.asp

inattentional blindness: Mack, A., & Rock, I. (1998). Inattentional blindness. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Gorilla study: Chabris, C. F., & Simons, D. J. (2011). The invisible gorilla: And other ways our intuitions deceive us. New York: Penguin Random House.

Kant and Wordsworth complained Blair, A. M. (2010). Too much to know: Managing scholarly information before the modern age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

categorization reduces mental effort Direct quote from Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 27–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

For the first 99% of our history Direct quote from Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, p. 34.

an unprecedented volume of business Almost direct quote from Wright, A. (2008). Glut: Mastering information through the ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 49.

The first forms of writing emerged Childe, V. G. (1951). Man makes himself. New York, NY: New American Library.

originate from sales receipts Direct quote from Wright, A. (2008). Glut: Mastering information through the ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 49.

add up to what we think of as civilization Direct quote from Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, p. 34.

“weaken men’s characters . . .” Wright, A. (2008). Glut: Mastering information through the ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 6.

Thamus, king of Egypt, argued Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: Vintage, p. 74. Perhaps Thamus was foreshadowing the world of George Orwell’s 1984 in which texts were retroactively edited or purged to conform with an ever-changing official version of facts by the government.

Callimachus said books are “a great evil.” Blair, A. M. (2010). Too much to know: Managing scholarly information before the modern age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 17.

Seneca recommended Blair (2010), p. 15.

“foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous . . .” Blair (2010).

“return to barbarism.” Blair (2010).

“even if all knowledge could be found in books . . .” Blair, A. M. (2010). Too much to know: Managing scholarly information before the modern age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. On the topic of too many books, see also, Queenan, J. (2013). One for the books. New York, NY: Viking.

these warnings were raised . . . television Greenstein, J. (1954). Effect of television upon elementary school grades. The Journal of Educational Research, 48(3), 161–176.

and, Maccoby, E. E. (1951). Television: Its impact on school children. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(3), 421–444.

and, Scheuer, J. (1992). The sound bite society. New England Review, 14(4), 264–267.

and, Witty, P. (1950). Children’s, parents’ and teachers’ reactions to television. Elementary English, 27(6), 349–355, p. 396.

these warnings were raised . . . computers Cromie, W. J. (1999, January 21). Computer addiction is coming on-line. Harvard Gazette.

and, Shaffer, H. J., Hall, M. N., & Vander Bilt, J. (2000). “Computer addiction”: A critical consideration. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 70(2), 162–168.

these warnings were raised . . . iPods Cockrill, A., Sullivan, M., & Norbury, H. L. (2011). Music consumption: Lifestyle choice or addiction. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 18(2), 160–166.

and, McFedries, P. (2005). Technically speaking: The iPod people. IEEE Spectrum, 42(2), 76.

and, Norbury, H. L. (2008). A study of Apple’s iPod: iPod addiction: Does it exist? (Master’s thesis). Swansea University, Wales.

these warnings were raised . . . iPads Aldridge, G. (2013, April 21). Girl aged four is Britain’s youngest-known iPad addict. Daily Mirror.

and, Smith, J. L. (2013, December 28). Switch off—it’s time for your digital detox. The Telegraph.

these warnings were raised . . . e-mail Lincoln, A. (2011). FYI: TMI: Toward a holistic social theory of information overload. First Monday 16(3).

and, Taylor, C. (2002, June 3). 12 steps for e-mail addicts. Time.

these warnings were raised . . . Twitter Hemp, P. (2009). Death by information overload. Harvard Business Review, 87(9), 82–89.

and, Khang, H., Kim, J. K., & Kim, Y. (2013). Self-traits and motivations as antecedents of digital media flow and addiction: The Internet, mobile phones, and video games. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2416–2424.

and, Saaid, S. A., Al-Rashid, N. A. A., & Abdullah, Z. (2014). The impact of addiction to Twitter among university students. In J. J. Park, I. Stojmenovic, M. Choi, & F. Xhafa (Eds.), Lecture notes in electrical engineering Vol. 276: Future information technology (pp. 231–236). Springer.

these warnings were raised . . . Facebook Pinker, S. (2010, June 11). Mind over mass media. The New York Times, p. A31.

and, Saenz, A. (2011, December 13). How social media is ruining your mind. Retrieved from http://singularityhub.com

By 1623, this number Citing Brian Ogilvie, in Blair, A. M. (2010). Too much to know: Managing scholarly information before the modern age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 12.

9,000 species of grasses United States Department of Agriculture. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.usda.gov

2,700 types of palm trees Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, Coral Gables, FL (2011).

And the numbers keep growing Jowit, J. (2010, September 19). Scientists prune list of world’s plants. The Guardian.

and, Headrick, D. R. (2000). When information came of age: Technologies of knowledge in the age of reason and revolution, 1700–1850. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 20.

increased by at least 3,000 Nervous system squid. (2012, February 8). Internet search: Google Scholar. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com

Note: Between the time of writing and the time of publication, the number had increased to 58,600 research articles.

Five exabytes (5 × 10¹⁸) of new data Lyman, P., Varian, H. R., Swearingen, K., Charles, P., Good, N., Jordan, L. L., & Pal, J. (2003). How much information? 2003 (University of California at Berkeley School of Information Management Report). Retrieved from http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu

50,000 times the number of words Wright, A. (2008). Glut: Mastering information through the ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 6.

This vigilance system In the scientific literature, this is often called the saliency network or the orienting system.

focus only on that which is relevant In the scientific literature, this is often called using top-down processing, and in particular, the alerting system.

shadow work Illich, I. (1981). Shadow work. London, UK: Marion Boyars.

and, Lambert, C. (2011, October 30). Our unpaid, extra shadow work. The New York Times, p. SR12.

replaces her cell phone Manjoo, F. (2014, March 13). A wild idea: Making our smartphones last longer. The New York Times, p. B1.

new locations for old menu items This didn’t happen to our ancestors. Your grandparents learned to write with pen and paper, and maybe to type. The medium of pen-and-paper didn’t change for centuries. Grandpa didn’t have to learn how to use a new pen every few years, or write on a new surface.

better choose our elected officials Turner, C. (1987). Organizing information: Principles and practice. London, UK: Clive Bingley, p. 2.

Human infants between four and nine months Baillargeon, R., Spelke, E. S., & Wasserman, S. (1985). Object permanence in five-month-old infants. Cognition, 20(3), 191–208.

and, Munakata, Y., McClelland, J. L., Johnson, M. H., & Siegler, R. S. (1997). Rethinking infant knowledge: Toward an adaptive process account of successes and failures in object permanence tasks. Psychological Review, 104(4), 686–713.

communicate about those systems Levinson, S. C. (2012). Kinship and human thought. Science, 336(6084), 988–989.

6,000 languages known Levinson, S. C. (2012). Kinship and human thought. Science, 336(6084), 988–989.

This is not true in many languages Trautmann, T. R. (2008). Lewis Henry Morgan and the invention of kinship. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Japanese quails Wilson, G. D. (1987). Variant sexuality: Research and theory. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

patterns in naming plants Atran, S. (1990). Cognitive foundations of natural history: Towards an anthropology of science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

“are interested in all kinds of things . . .” Atran, S. (1990). Cognitive foundations of natural history: Towards an anthropology of science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, p. 216.

Out of 30,000 edible plants Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, p. 37.

CHAPTER 2

without registering their content Schooler, J. W., Reichle, E. D., & Halpern, D. V. (2004). Zoning out while reading: Evidence for dissociations between experience and metaconsciousness. In D. T. Levin (Ed.), Thinking and seeing: Visual metacognition in adults and children (pp. 203–226). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

daydreaming or mind-wandering network In particular, the insula. Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: A network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5–6), 655–667.

and, Andrews-Hanna, J. R., Reidler, J. S., Sepulcre, J., Poulin, R., & Buckner, R. L. (2010). Functional-anatomic fractionation of the brain’s default network. Neuron, 65(4), 550–562.

and, D’Argembeau, A., Collette, F., Van der Linden, M., Laureys, S., Del Fiore, G., Degueldre, C., . . . Salmon, E. (2005). Self-referential reflective activity and its relationship with rest: A PET study. NeuroImage, 25(2), 616–624.

and, Gusnard, D. A., & Raichle, M. E. (2001). Searching for a baseline: Functional imaging and the resting human brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(10), 685–694.

and, Jack, A. I., Dawson, A. J., Begany, K. L., Leckie, R. L., Barry, K. P., Ciccia, A. H., & Snyder, A. Z. (2013). fMRI reveals reciprocal inhibition between social and physical cognitive domains. NeuroImage, 66, 385–401.

and, Kelley, W. M., Macrae, C. N., Wyland, C. L., Caglar, S., Inati, S., & Heatherton, T. F. (2002). Finding the self? An event-related fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(5), 785–794.

and, Raichle, M. E., MacLeod, A. M., Snyder, A. Z., Powers, W. J., Gusnard, D. A., & Shulman, G. L. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682.

and, Wicker, B., Ruby, P., Royet, J. P., & Fonlupt, P. (2003). A relation between rest and the self in the brain? Brain Research Reviews, 43(2), 224–230.

Note: Tasks requiring mechanical reasoning or objects-in-the-world activate the stay-on-task or central executive network.

That’s the daydreaming mode Raichle, M. E., MacLeod, A. M., Snyder, A. Z., Powers, W. J., Gusnard, D. A., & Shulman, G. L. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682.

the default mode Raichle, M. E., MacLeod, A. M., Snyder, A. Z., Powers, W. J., Gusnard, D. A., & Shulman, G. L. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682.

the mind-wandering mode In the scientific literature, what I’m calling the mind-wandering mode is referred to as the default mode or task-negative network, and the central executive is referred to as the task-positive network.

These two brain states form a kind of yin-yang Binder, J. R., Frost, J. A., Hammeke, T. A., Bellgowan, P. S., Rao, S. M., & Cox, R. W. (1999). Conceptual processing during the conscious resting state: A functional MRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11(1), 80–93.

and, Corbetta, M., Patel, G., & Shulman, G. (2008). The reorienting system of the human brain: From environment to theory of mind. Neuron, 58(3), 306–324.

and, Fox, M. D., Snyder, A. Z., Vincent, J. L., Corbetta, M., Van Essen, D. C., & Raichle, M. E. (2005). The human brain is intrinsically organized into dynamic, anticorrelated functional networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(27), 9673–9678.

and, Mazoyer, B., Zago, L., Mellet, E., Bricogne, S., Etard, O., Houde, O., . . . Tzourio-Mazoyer, N. (2001). Cortical networks for working memory and executive functions sustain the conscious resting state in man. Brain Research Bulletin, 54(3), 287–298.

and, Shulman, G. L., Fiez, J. A., Corbetta, M., Buckner, R. L., Miezin, F. M., Raichle, M. E., & Petersen, S. E. (1997). Common blood flow changes across visual tasks: II. Decreases in cerebral cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(5), 648–663.

more the mind-wandering network Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: A network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5–6), 655–667.

our attentional filter: I’m here bringing together, for the sake of clarity and parsimony, what the neuroscientific literature considers three different systems: the filter itself, the saliency detector (also called the orienting system or reorienting system), and the alerting or vigilance mode. The distinctions are important to neuroscientists, but they’re unimportant for nonspecialists.

mind-wandering mode is a network Greicius, M. D., Krasnow, B., Reiss, A. L., & Menon, V. (2003). Functional connectivity in the resting brain: A network analysis of the default mode hypothesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(1), 253–258.

the switch is controlled in a part Sridharan, D., Levitin, D. J., & Menon, V. (2008). A critical role for the right fronto-insular cortex in switching between central-executive and default-mode networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(34), 12569–12574.

The insula is also involved in attention, as it helps to regulate physical and emotional urges. Urges often signal a loss of homeostasis and it can be important for us to be aware of this—being thirsty or hungry are obvious examples, or craving protein or a cooler environment. But sustained attention requires that we suppress these urges. Some of us are better than others at this—in some of us, the concentration wins and we end up physically uncomfortable; in others, the urges win and we end up taking multiple trips to the refrigerator when we really should be working. The insula helps to balance these competing demands, and part of its job is to send signals up to consciousness when important urges arise. People with brain damage to the insula who are trying to give up smoking have an easier time of it—the urges aren’t being passed up to consciousness.

Naqvi, N. H., Rudrauf, D., Damasio, H., & Bechara, A. (2007). Damage to the insula disrupts addiction to cigarette smoking. Science, 315(5811), 531–534.

Switching between two external objects involves the temporal-parietal junction Corbetta, M., Patel, G., & Shulman, G. L. (2008). The reorienting system of the human brain: From environment to theory of mind. Neuron, 58(3), 306–324.

and, Shulman, G. L., & Corbetta, M. (2014). Two attentional networks: Identification and function within a larger cognitive architecture. In M. Posner (Ed.), The cognitive neuroscience of attention (2nd ed.) (pp. 113–128). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

For an alternate view, see Geng, J. J., & Vossel, S. (2013). Re-evaluating the role of TPJ in attentional control: Contextual updating? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(10), 2608–2620.

like a see-saw Meyer, M. L., Spunt, R. P., Berkman, E. T., Taylor, S. E., & Lieberman, M. D. (2012). Evidence for social working memory from a parametric functional MRI study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(6), 1883–1888.

Daniel Dennett showed Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

four or five things at a time The classic 1956 finding from George Miller that was taught for decades, that attention is limited to 7 ± 2 items, is giving way in contemporary neuroscience to a more restricted view of only four items.

Cowan, N. (2009). Capacity limits and consciousness. In T. Baynes, A. Cleeremans, & P. Wilken (Eds.), Oxford companion to consciousness (pp. 127–130). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

and, Cowan, N. (2010). The magical mystery four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 51–57.

four components in the human attentional system Cognitive neuroscientists recognize a fifth component, the alerting mode or vigilance. This is conceptually distinct from the attentional filter, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’m treating it as a special case of the on-task mode, where the task is search or vigilance.

This is the state you’re in when you’re sustaining vigilance—the resting state is replaced by a new state that involves preparation for detecting and responding to an expected signal. We do this when we’re waiting for the phone to ring, the traffic light to turn green, or the other shoe to drop. It is characterized by a sense of heightened awareness, sensory sensitivity, and arousal.

The mind-wandering network recruits neurons Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: A network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5–6), 655–667.

dense mass of fibers connected Corbetta, M., Patel, G., & Shulman, G. L. (2008). The reorienting system of the human brain: From environment to theory of mind. Neuron, 58(3), 306–324.

the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA Kapogiannis, D., Reiter, D. A., Willette, A. A., & Mattson, M. P. (2013). Posteromedial cortex glutamate and GABA predict intrinsic functional connectivity of the default mode network. NeuroImage, 64, 112–119.

(of a gene called COMT) Baldinger, P., Hahn, A., Mitterhauser, M., Kranz, G. S., Friedl, M., Wadsak, W., . . . Lanzenberger, R. (2013). Impact of COMT genotype on serotonin-1A receptor binding investigated with PET. Brain Structure and Function, 1–12.

The serotonin transporter gene SLC6A4 Bachner-Melman, R., Dina, C., Zohar, A. H., Constantini, N., Lerer, E., Hoch, S., . . . Ebstein, R. P. (2005). AVPR1a and SLC6A4 gene polymorphisms are associated with creative dance performance. PLoS Genetics, 1(3), e42.

and, Ebstein, R. P., Israel, S., Chew, S. H., Zhong, S., & Knafo, A. (2010). Genetics of human social behavior. Neuron, 65(6), 831–844.

plus the basal ganglia Posner, M. I., & Fan, J. (2008). Attention as an organ system. In J. R. Pomerantz (Ed.), Topics in integrative neuroscience: From cells to cognition (pp. 31–61). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Sustained attention also depends Sarter, M., Givens, B., & Bruno, J. P. (2001). The cognitive neuroscience of sustained attention: Where top-down meets bottom-up. Brain Research Reviews, 35(2), 146–160.

acetylcholine in the right prefrontal cortex Howe, W. M., Berry, A. S., Francois, J., Gilmour, G., Carp, J. M., Tricklebank, M., . . . Sarter, M. (2013). Prefrontal cholinergic mechanisms instigating shifts from monitoring for cues to cue-guided performance: Converging electrochemical and fMRI evidence from rats and humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(20), 8742–8752.

and, Sarter, M., Givens, B., & Bruno, J. P. (2001). The cognitive neuroscience of sustained attention: Where top-down meets bottom-up. Brain Research Reviews, 35(2), 146–160.

and, Sarter, M., & Parikh, V. (2005). Choline transporters, cholinergic transmission and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(1), 48–56.

Acetylcholine density in the brain changes rapidly Howe, W. M., Berry, A. S., Francois, J., Gilmour, G., Carp, J. M., Tricklebank, M., . . . Sarter, M. (2013). Prefrontal cholinergic mechanisms instigating shifts from monitoring for cues to cue-guided performance: Converging electrochemical and fMRI evidence from rats and humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(20), 8742–8752.

Acetylcholine also plays a role in sleep Sarter, M., & Bruno, J. P. (1999). Cortical cholinergic inputs mediating arousal, attentional processing and dreaming: Differential afferent regulation of the basal forebrain by telencephalic and brainstem afferents. Neuroscience, 95(4), 933–952.

acetylcholine and noradrenaline appear Sarter, M., personal communication. December 23, 2013.

nicotine can improve the rate of signal detection Witte, E. A., Davidson, M. C., & Marrocco, R. T. (1997). Effects of altering brain cholinergic activity on covert orienting of attention: Comparison of monkey and human performance. Psychopharmacology, 132(4), 324–334.

strongly coupled to the cingulate Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: A network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5–6), 655–667.

the attentional filter incorporates a warning system Called the alerting system in most of the neuroscientific literature, e.g., Posner, M. I. (2012). Attention in a social world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Drugs, such as guanfacine Marrocco, R. T., & Davidson, M. C. (1998). Neurochemistry of attention. In R. Parasuraman (Ed.), The attentive brain (pp. 35–50). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

but for a different view see also, Clerkin, S. M., Schulz, K. P., Halperin, J. M., Newcorn, J. H., Ivanov, I., Tang, C. Y., & Fan, J. (2009). Guanfacine potentiates the activation of prefrontal cortex evoked by warning signals. Biological Psychiatry, 66(4), 307–312.

governed by noradrenaline and cortisol Hermans, E. J., van Marle, H. J., Ossewaarde, L., Henckens, M. J., Qin, S., van Kesteren, M. T., . . . Fernández, G. (2011). Stress-related noradrenergic activity prompts large-scale neural network reconfiguration. Science, 334(6059), 1151–1153.

and, Frodl-Bauch, T., Bottlender, R., & Hegerl, U. (1999). Neurochemical substrates and neuroanatomical generators of the event-related P300. Neuropsychobiology, 40(2), 86–94.

Higher levels of dopamine here Dang, L. C., O’Neil, J. P., & Jagust, W. J. (2012). Dopamine supports coupling of attention-related networks. The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(28), 9582–9587.

The noradrenaline system is evolutionarily Corbetta, M., Patel, G., & Shulman, G. L. (2008). The reorienting system of the human brain: From environment to theory of mind. Neuron, 58(3), 306–324.

“Our walls are filled with books . . .” Wegner, D. M. (1987). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. In B. Mullen & G. R. Goethals (Eds.), Theories of group behavior (pp. 185–208). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, p. 187.

students scribble answers to tests Wegner, D. M. (1987). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. In B. Mullen & G. R. Goethals (Eds.), Theories of group behavior (pp. 185–208). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, p. 187.

“Memory is unreliable . . .” Harper, J. (Writer). (2011). Like a redheaded stepchild [television series episode]. In B. Heller (Executive producer), The Mentalist (Season 3, Episode 21). Los Angeles, CA: CBS Television.

An additional problem is that memories can become altered Diekelmann, S., Büchel, C., Born, J., & Rasch, B. (2011). Labile or stable: Opposing consequences for memory when reactivated during waking and sleep. Nature Neuroscience, 14(3), 381–386.

and, Nader, K., Schafe, G. E., & LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Reply—Reconsolidation: The labile nature of consolidation theory. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1(3), 216–219.

even President George W. Bush falsely recalled Greenberg, D. L. (2004). President Bush’s false [flashbulb] memory of 9/11/01. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 363–370.

and, Talarico, J. M., & Rubin, D. C. (2003). Confidence, not consistency, characterizes flashbulb memories. Psychological Science, 14(5), 455–461.

not as well as the first item In some cases, the first and last items on a list are remembered equally well, and in some cases the last items are remembered better than the first. These differences are primarily due to two variables: how long the list is and whether or not you’re rehearsing the items as you encounter them. With a long list and no rehearsal, the primacy effect decreases. With an intermediate length list and rehearsal, the primacy effect can be larger than the recency effect because those early items you encountered receive more rehearsal and encoding than later items.

the word smashed in the question Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585–589.

a labile state Nader, K., & Hardt, O. (2009). A single standard for memory: The case for reconsolidation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(3), 224–234.

“. . . the next time you pull up that ‘file’” Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The boy who was raised as a dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: What traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 156.

typical term that we use most often Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 27–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

traces its roots back to Aristotle Irwin, T. H. (1988). Aristotle’s first principles. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

and, MacNamara, J. (1999). Through the rearview mirror: Historical reflections on psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 33.

and, Vogt, K. (2010). Ancient skepticism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2011 ed.). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/

caudate nucleus Maddox, T. (2013, January). Talk presented at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Tucson, AZ.

taxonomic classification Ross, B. H., & Murphy, G. L. (1999). Food for thought: Cross-classification and category organization in a complex real-world domain. Cognitive Psychology, 38(4), 495–553.

the connections are the learning Seung, S. (2012). Connectome: How the brain’s wiring makes us who we are. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

specific locations in the brain Although the precise region of activity for mental categories varies from person to person, within a person it tends to be stable and confined to a particular location in the brain.

What is a game: Wittgenstein, L. (2010). Philosophical investigations. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

people who carry around a pen and notepads Not surprisingly, most didn’t want their names used in this book, but the list includes several Nobel Prize winners, leading scientists, artists and writers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and national politicians.

“like carrying around a stone tablet and chisel.” Sandberg, S. (2013, March 17). By the book: Sheryl Sandberg. The New York Times Sunday Book Review, p. BR8.

“Your mind will remind you . . .” Allen, D. (2008). Making it all work: Winning at the game of work and business of life. New York, NY: Penguin, p. 35.

“If an obligation remained recorded . . .” Allen, D. (2002). Getting things done: The art of stress-free productivity. New York, NY: Penguin, p. 15.

“You must be assured . . .” Allen, D. (2002). Getting things done: The art of stress-free productivity. New York, NY: Penguin.

“when information is organized in small chunks . . .” Pirsig, R. (1991). Lila: An inquiry into morals. New York, NY: Bantam.

“Instead of asking . . .” Pirsig, R. (1991). Lila: An inquiry into morals. New York, NY: Bantam.

With index cards, you can sort and re-sort Say you have to call ten people today. You put each person’s name and phone number on a card, along with a reminder or some salient notes about what you need to discuss. During the second call, you learn of a time-sensitive matter that involves the person who was tenth on your list. You simply take that card and put it on top. Your grocery list? You put it in the stack according to when you expect to get to it, but if you find yourself driving by the grocery store unexpectedly, with time on your hands, you pluck the card out of the stack and put it on top.

Paul Simon carries a notebook Simon, P., personal communication. September 19, 2013, New York, NY.

John R. Pierce Pierce, J. R., personal communication. January 3, 1999, Palo Alto, CA.

Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, and George Lucas McKay, B., & McKay, K. (2010, September 13). The pocket notebooks of 20 famous men [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/09/13/the-pocket-notebooks-of-20-famous-men/

CHAPTER 3

All kinds of things that we don’t eat today Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, pp. 52–53.

and, Steyn, P. (2011). Changing times, changing palates: The dietary impacts of Basuto adaptation to new rulers, crops, and markets, 1830s–1966. In C. Folke Ax, N. Brimnes, N. T. Jensen, & K. Oslund (Eds.), Cultivating the colonies: Colonial states and their environmental legacies (pp. 214–236). Columbus, OH: Ohio University Press.

See also, Hopkins, J. (2004). Extreme cuisine: The weird & wonderful foods that people eat. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing.

servants requested written assurance Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, p. 80.

Until 1600 Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, pp. 56–61.

2,260 visible objects Arnold, J. E., Graesch, A. P., Ragazzini, E., & Ochs, E. (2012). Life at home in the twenty-first century: 32 families open their doors. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press at UCLA.

and, Segerstrom, S. C., & Miller, G. E. (2004). Psychological stress and the human immune system: a meta-analytic study of 30 years of inquiry. Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 601–630.

garages given over to old furniture This is nearly a direct quote from Kolbert, E. (2012, July 2). Spoiled rotten. The New Yorker.

Three out of four Americans report Teitell, B. (2012, July 10). Boxed in, wanting out. The Boston Globe.

Women’s cortisol levels (the stress hormone) spike Green, P. (2012, June 28). The way we live: Drowning in stuff. The New York Times, p. D2.

Elevated cortisol levels can lead to Kirschbaum, C., Wolf, O. T., May, M., Wippich, W., & Hellhammer, D. H. (1996). Stress- and treatment-induced elevations of cortisol levels associated with impaired declarative memory in healthy adults. Life Sciences, 58(17), 1475–1483.

and, Lupien, S. J., Nair, N. P. V., Brière, S., Maheu, F., Tu, M. T., Lemay, Μ., . . . Meaney, M. J. (1999). Increased cortisol levels and impaired cognition in human aging: Implication for depression and dementia in later life. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 10(2), 117–140.

and, Melamed, S., Ugarten, U., Shirom, A., Kahana, L., Lerman, Y., & Froom, P. (1999). Chronic burnout, somatic arousal and elevated salivary cortisol levels. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 46(6), 591–598.

suppression of the body’s immune system Maule, A. G., Schreck, C. B., & Kaattari, S. L. (1987). Changes in the immune system of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) during the parr-to-smolt transformation and after implantation of cortisol. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 44(1), 161–166.

one gender category or the other Further differentiation in the pants department might be made for bell-bottoms, boot-cut, button fly, zip fly, prewashed, acid-washed, and so on. This—as with file folder logic—depends on the total number of items. If the store has a large stock, it makes sense to divide it up the way I’ve described. But if you go to a small boutique, they may have only six pants of all types in each size.

Lancôme provides the fixtures Interview with MAC counter agent at Macy’s San Francisco (Union Square) store, December 30, 2013, 11:15 A.M. (her name is being withheld because she is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company). This was confirmed in an interview with the associate manager.

maximum information Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and categorization (pp. 27–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

It’s his hippocampus Lavenex, P., Steele, M. A., & Jacobs, L. F. (2000). Sex differences, but no seasonal variations in the hippocampus of food‐caching squirrels: A stereological study. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 425(1), 152–166.

London taxi drivers are required Harrison, L. (2012, August 6). Taxi drivers and the importance of ‘The Knowledge’. The Telegraph.

and, No GPS! Aspiring London taxi drivers memorize a tangle of streets [Video file]. (2013, April 11). NBC News. Retrieved from www.nbcnews.com

the hippocampus in London taxi drivers Maguire, E. A., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Frith, C. D. (1997). Recalling routes around London: Activation of the right hippocampus in taxi drivers. The Journal of Neuroscience, 17(18), 7103–7110.

and, Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398–4403.

and, Maguire, E. A., Woollett, K., & Spiers, H. J. (2006). London taxi drivers and bus drivers: A structural MRI and neuropsychological analysis. Hippocampus, 16(12), 1091–1101.

dedicated cells in the hippocampus Deng, W., Mayford, M., & Gage, F. H. (2013). Selection of distinct populations of dentate granule cells in response to inputs as a mechanism for pattern separation in mice. eLife, 2, e00312.

The famous mnemonic system Foer, J. (2011). Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything. New York, NY: Penguin.

cognitive prosthetics Kosslyn, S. M., & Miller, G. W. (2013, October 18). A new map of how we think: Top brain/bottom brain. The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Zhivago Joni Mitchell recalls, “I remember when I first saw that movie. Of course I liked the cinematography, the story, and the outfits. But when Julie Christie walked into her front door and put the keys on a hook, I thought ‘there’s something I can use.’ She put her keys right where she wouldn’t lose them.” Mitchell, J., personal communication. October 4, 2013.

[Untitled photograph of key holders]: Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://www.keanmiles.com/key-holder.html. Item can also be found at http://www.moderngent.com/j-me/his_hers_keyholders.php

“I forget all kinds of [other] stuff . . .” Dominus, S. (2014, January 26). My moves speak for themselves. The New York Times Sunday Magazine, p. MM10.

put an umbrella near the front door Kosslyn, S., personal communication. August, 2013.

If the umbrella is by the door all the time Along these same lines, efficiency experts recommend leaving things where we’re apt to need them.

“I don’t want to waste energy . . .” Conversation with the author, September 7, 2012, British Columbia.

Stephen Stills’s home studio Conversation with the author, January 3, 2013.

Michael Jackson fastidiously catalogued Logan, L. (Writer). (2013). Michael Jackson’s lucrative legacy [television series episode]. In J. Fagar (Executive producer), 60 Minutes. New York, NY: CBS News.

John Lennon kept boxes and boxes of work tapes Ono, Yoko (January 18, 1988). Lost Lennon Tapes Premiere Show. (Interview). Westwood One Radio Network.

probably closer to four Cowan, N. (2010). The magical mystery four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 51–57.

and, Cowan, N. (2009). Capacity limits and consciousness. In T. Bayne, A. Cleeremans & P. Wilken (Eds.), Oxford companion to consciousness (pp. 127–130). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

they need to get control Direct quote from Allen, D. (2008). Making it all work: Winning at the game of work and the business of life. New York, NY: Penguin, p. 18.

make visible the things you need regularly Norman, D. (2013). The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. New York, NY: Basic Books.

In organizing your living space Four guiding cognitive principles for organizing shelves and drawers are these: Make frequently used objects visible, or at least handy, and as a corollary, put infrequently used objects out of the way so that they don’t distract; put similar things together; put together things that are used together, even if they are not similar; organize hierarchically when possible.

The display of liquor bottles Nearly direct quote from Mutkoski, S. (professor, Cornell School of Hotel Administration), personal communication. May 2, 2013.

A bar in Lexington, Kentucky Nearly direct quote from Mutkoski, S. (professor, Cornell School of Hotel Administration), personal communication. May 2, 2013.

Students who studied for an exam Farnsworth, P. R. (1934). Examinations in familiar and unfamiliar surroundings. The Journal of Social Psychology, 5(1), 128–129.

and, Smith, S. M. (1979). Remembering in and out of context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5(5), 460–471, p. 460.

and, Smith, S. M., & Vela, E. (2001). Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 203–220.

brain simply wasn’t designed I’m using the term designed loosely; the brain wasn’t designed, it evolved as a collection of special-purpose processing modules.

1941 by the Oxford Filing Supply Company Jonas, F. D. (1942). U.S. Patent No. 2305710 A. East Williston, NY. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Related patents by Jonas and Oxford include US2935204, 2312717, 2308077, 2800907, 3667854, 2318077, and many others.

You might have categories Creel, R. (2013). How to set up an effective filing system. Smead Corporation. Retrieved from http://www.smead.com/hot-topics/filing-system-1396.asp

and, United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2012). Records management tools. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov

For documents you need to access somewhat frequently On the other hand, infrequently used documents don’t merit this level of attention. You might want to keep sales receipts for household appliances in case you need them for a warranty claim. If your experience with appliances is that they don’t break often, a single folder for all the receipts is efficient, as opposed to individual folders labeled for each appliance. On that one day in three years when you need to find the receipt for your washing machine, you can spend two or three minutes sifting through the collected folder of appliance receipts.

“putting everything in a certain place . . .” Merrill, D. C., & Martin, J. A. (2010). Getting organized in the Google era: How to get stuff out of your head, find it when you need it, and get it done right. New York, NY: Crown Business, p. 73.

“not wired to multi-task well . . .” As quoted in Kastenbaum, S. (2012, May 26). Texting while walking a dangerous experiment in multitasking [audio podcast]. CNN Radio.

we’re more like a bad amateur plate spinner Naish, J. (2009, August 11). Is multi-tasking bad for your brain? Experts reveal the hidden perils of juggling too many jobs. Daily Mail.

more people have cell phones than have toilets Six billion of the world’s 7 billion people have cell phones, while only 4.5 billion have toilets, according to a United Nations report. Worstall, T. (2013, March 23). More people have mobile phones than toilets. Forbes.

reduce your effective IQ by 10 points Naish, J. (2009, August 11). Is multi-tasking bad for your brain? Experts reveal the hidden perils of juggling too many jobs. Daily Mail.

and, Wilson, G. (2010). Infomania experiment for Hewlett-Packard. Retrieved from www.drglennwilson.com

the information goes into the hippocampus Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(31), 11778–11783.

and, Cohen, N. J., & Eichenbaum, H. (1993). Memory, amnesia, and the hippocampal system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

“People can’t do [multitasking] very well . . .” As quoted in Naish, J. (2009, August 11). Is multi-tasking bad for your brain? Experts reveal the hidden perils of juggling too many jobs. Daily Mail.

good at this deluding business See, e.g., Gazzaniga, M. (2008). Human: The science behind what makes us unique. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

the metabolic costs of switching itself Task switching causes large changes in the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate gyrus, as well as other brain areas, and these changes in oxygenation level almost always entail glucose being metabolized.

We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain The fatigue that we observe in task-switching might also have a lot to do with the tasks we’re switching between—we typically switch between two tasks that are boring (almost by definition, we tend to stay on a task when we find it absorbing). M. Posner, personal communication, April 16, 2014.

repeated task switching leads to anxiety Nash, J. (2009, August 11). Is multi-tasking bad for your brain? Experts reveal the hidden perils of juggling too many jobs. Daily Mail.

can lead to aggressive and impulsive behaviors Naish, J. (2009, August 11). Is multi-tasking bad for your brain? Experts reveal the hidden perils of juggling too many jobs. Daily Mail.

staying on task is controlled by the anterior cingulate and the striatum Tang, Y-Y., Rothbart, M. K., & Posner, M. I. (2012). Neural correlates of establishing, maintaining, and switching brain states. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(6), 330–337.

reduces the brain’s need for glucose Haier, R. J., Siegel, B. V., MacLachlan, A., Soderling, E., Lottenberg, S., & Buchsbaum, M.S. (1992). Regional glucose metabolic changes after learning a complex visuospatial/motor task: A positron emission tomographic study. Brain Research, 570(1–2), 134–143.

Crisis hotlines Kaufman, L. (2014, February 5). In texting era, crisis hotlines put help at youths’ fingertips. The New York Times, p. A1.

The rats just pressed the lever Olds, J. (1956). Pleasure centers in the brain. Scientific American, 195(4), 105–116.

and, Olds, J., & Milner, P. (1954). Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. Journal of Comparative Physiological Psychology, 47(6), 419–427.

stopped only by his going into cardiac arrest Associated Press (2007, September 18). Chinese man drops dead after 3-Day gaming binge.

and, Demick, B. (2005, August 29). Gamers rack up losses. The Los Angeles Times.

3 million Adobe customers Dove, J. (2013, October 3). Adobe reports massive security breach. PCWorld.

2 million Vodafone customers Thomas, D. (2013, September 12). Hackers steal bank details of 2m Vodafone customers in Germany. Financial Times.

160 million Visa Yadron, D., & Barrett, D. (2013, October 3). Jury indicts 13 cyberattack suspects. The Wall Street Journal, p. A2.

A clever formula for generating passwords Manjoo, F. (2009, July 24). Fix your terrible, insecure passwords in five minutes. Slate.

biometric markers Nahamoo, D. (2011, December 19). IBM 5 in 5: Biometric data will be key to personal security [Web log message]. IBM Research. Retrieved from http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/ibm-5-in-5-biometric-data-will-be-key.html

Daniel Kahneman recommends taking a proactive approach Kahneman, D., personal communication. July 11, 2013.

See also, Klein, G. (2003). The power of intuition: How to use your gut feelings to make better decisions at work. New York, NY: Crown, pp. 98–101.

and, Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

USB key with all your medical records Scan copies of your medical records, history of lab tests, any X-rays that you have, etc., and put them in a PDF file on the USB key. The first page of the PDF document should have vital information, including your name, address, birth date, blood type if you know it, and any drug allergies (this is very important!).

This way, if you are ever in an accident or need emergency medical attention—or if you are far away from home and need routine medical attention—your attending physician doesn’t need to wait to get records from your family doctor. USB keys are inexpensive, and PDF files are readable virtually anywhere you go. All manner of misdiagnoses, missteps, and mistakes can be avoided if this information is readily available. To make sure that it’s not missed, include a piece of paper in your wallet or purse, next to your health insurance card, that says All my medical records are on a USB key that I carry with me at all times.

going through each combination Wynn, S., personal communication. May 5, 2012, Las Vegas, NV.

trait found even in many lower species Levitin, D. J. (2008). The world in six songs: How the musical brain created human nature. New York, NY: Dutton.

CHAPTER 4

July 16, 2013 Hu, W., & Goodman, J. D. (2013, July 18). Wake-up call for New Yorkers as police seek abducted boy. The New York Times, p. A1.

and, Shallwani, P. (2013, July 17). Missing-child hunt sets off wake-up call. The Wall Street Journal, p. A19.

The alert, which showed the license plate “Amber Alert” refers to the Child Abduction Alert System in the United States, named in memory of Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996.

DARPA offered $40,000 Markoff, J. (2009, December 1). Looking for balloons and insights to online behavior. The New York Times, p. D2.

the first computer network, ARPANET Leiner, B. M., Cerf, V. G., Clark, D. D., Kahn, R. E., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D. C., . . . Wolff, S. (2009). A brief history of the Internet. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 39(5), 22–31.

and, Computer History Museum. (2004). Internet history. Retrieved from http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history

experts pointed out Markoff, J. (2010, April 13). New force behind agency of wonder. The New York Times, p. D1.

solving the Where’s Waldo? problem Buchenroth, T., Garber, F., Gowker, B., & Hartzell, S. (2012, July). Automatic object recognition applied to Where’s Waldo? Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON), 2012 IEEE National, 117–120.

and, Garg, R., Seitz, S. M., Ramanan, D., & Snavely, N. (2011, June). Where’s Waldo: Matching people in images of crowds. Proceedings of the 24th IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 1793–1800.

Wikipedia is an example of crowdsourcing Ayers, P., Matthews, C., & Yates, B. (2008). How Wikipedia works: And how you can be a part of it. San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press, p. 514.

More than 4.5 million people Kickstarter, Inc. (2014). Seven things to know about Kickstarter. Retrieved from http://www.kickstarter.com

the group average comes Surowiecki, J. (2005). The wisdom of crowds. New York, NY: Penguin.

and, Treynor, J. L. (1987). Market efficiency and the bean jar experiment. Financial Analysts Journal, 43(3), 50–53.

the cancer is now in remission Iaconesi, S. (2012). TED (Producer). (2013). Why I open-sourced cures to my cancer: Salvatore Iaconesi at TEDGlobal 2013 [Video file]. Available from http://blog.ted.com

and, TEDMED. (2013, July 17). Salvatore Iaconesi at TEDMED 2013 [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com

and, TEDx Talks. (2012, November 4). My open source cure: Salvatore Iaconesi at TEDx transmedia [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com

distorted words that are often displayed on websites Google. (2014). Digitalizing books one word at a time. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

and, von Ahn, L., Maurer, B., McMillen, C., Abraham, D., & Blum, M. (2008). reCAPTCHA: Human-based character recognition via web security measures. Science, 321(5895), 1465–1468.

reCAPTCHAs are so-named for recycling—because they recycle human processing power von Ahn, Luis (co-inventor of reCAPTCHA), personal communication. April 15, 2014, e-mail.

reCAPTCHAs act as sentries Google. (2014). Digitalizing books one word at a time. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

and, von Ahn, L., Maurer, B., McMillen, C., Abraham, D., & Blum, M. (2008). reCAPTCHA: Human-based character recognition via web security measures. Science, 321(5895), 1465–1468.

actual book being scanned by Google This reCaptcha figure has been redrawn to match one in actual use by Google Books, and to highlight some of the difficulties entailed in machine vision.

connections to the temporoparietal junction Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2007). The role of the right temporoparietal junction in social interaction: How low-level computational processes contribute to meta-cognition. The Neuroscientist, 13(6), 580–593.

“When there’s easy agreement . . .” Gopnik, A. (2014, February 14). The information: How the internet gets inside us. The New Yorker, 123–128.

Too Complex to Organize? Isolated sentences here and there in this section of Chapter 4 first appeared in my review of Mindwise in The Wall Street Journal. Levitin, D. J. (2014, February 22–23). Deceivers and believers: We are surprisingly terrible at divining what’s going on in someone else’s mind [Review of the book Mindwise by N. Epley]. The Wall Street Journal, pp. C5, C6.

twenty family members Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The boy who was raised as a dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: What traumatized children can teach us about loss, love and healing. New York, NY: Basic Books.

You know a couple hundred people Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The boy who was raised as a dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: What traumatized children can teach us about loss, love and healing. New York, NY: Basic Books.

By 1850, the average family group This is nearly a direct quote from Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The boy who was raised as a dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: What traumatized children can teach us about loss, love and healing. New York, NY: Basic Books.

50% of Americans live alone. Fewer of us are having children Klinenberg, E. (2012, February 12). America: Single, and loving it. The New York Times, p. ST10.

It was common practice Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, p. 323.

“It was entirely usual . . .” Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday.

1,700 people a day Statistic Brain. (2013, December 11). Walmart company statistics. Retrieved from http://www.statisticbrain.com

“When I meet someone new, I make notes . . .” Shapiro, R., personal communication. May 6, 2012, Las Vegas, NV.

“Suppose I met Dr. Ware . . .” Gold, D., personal communication. November 26, 2013, Montreal, QC.

Craig Kallman is the chairman Kallman, C., personal communication. September 20, 2013, New York, NY.

arcane bits of information Wegner, D. M. (1987). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. In B. Mullen & G. R. Goethals (Eds.), Theories of group behavior (pp. 185–208). New York, NY: Springer New York, p. 189.

technically known as transactive memory Wegner, D. M., Giuliano, T., & Hertel, P. (1985). Cognitive interdependence in close relationships. In W. J. Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships (pp. 253–276). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

transactive memory strategies Wegner, D. M. (1987). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. In B. Mullen & G. R. Goethals (Eds.), Theories of group behavior (pp. 185–208). New York, NY: Springer New York, p. 194.

primate heritage Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529, p. 497.

being alone for too long causes neurochemical changes Grassian, S. (1983). Psychopathological effects of solitary confinement. American Journal of Psychiatry, 140(11), 1450–1454.

and, Posey, T. B., & Losch, M. E. (1983). Auditory hallucinations of hearing voices in 375 normal subjects. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 3(2), 99–113.

and, Smith, P. S. (2006). The effects of solitary confinement on prison inmates: A brief history and review of the literature. Crime and Justice, 34(1), 441–528.

Social isolation is also a risk factor Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). Creating social connection through inferential reproduction: Loneliness and perceived agency in gadgets, gods, and greyhounds. Psychological Science, 19(2), 114–120.

And although many of us think Klinenberg, E. (2012, February 12). America: Single, and loving it. The New York Times, p. ST10.

were outgoing or shy, open or reserved Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 58–59.

comfort in belonging The amygdala used to be called the fight-or-flight fear center of the brain. We now know it isn’t just for fear, but rather, for keeping track of salient emotional events of all kinds—the brain’s emotional learning and memory consolidation center. , J., Doyère, V., Nader, K., & LeDoux, J. E. (2006). Directly reactivated, but not indirectly reactivated, memories undergo reconsolidation in the amygdala. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(9), 3428–3433.

and, McGaugh, J. L. (2004). The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27(1), 1–28.

and, Phelps, E. A. (2006). Emotion and cognition: Insights from studies of the human amygdala. Annual Review of Psychology, 57(1), 27–53.

surpassing even Google Cashmore, P. (2006, July 11). MySpace, America’s number one. Retrieved from http://www.mashable.com

and, Olsen, S. (2006, July 13) Google’s antisocial downside. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com

1.2 billion regular monthly users Kiss, J. (2014, February 4). Facebook’s 10th birthday: from college dorm to 1.23 billion users. The Guardian.

replacement for in-person contact Marche, S. (2012, May). Is Facebook making us lonely? The Atlantic.

and, Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York, NY: Basic Books.

cost of all of our electronic connectedness Fredrickson, B. (2013, March 23). Your phone vs. your heart. The New York Times, p. SR14.

having friends to do things with Buhrmester, D., & Furman, W. (1987). The development of companionship and intimacy. Child Development, 58(4), 1101–1113.

assistance when needed; a relationship George, T. P., & Hartmann, D. P. (1996). Friendship networks of unpopular, average, and popular children. Child Development, 67(5), 2301–2316.

and, Hartup, W. W., & Stevens, N. (1997). Friendships and adaptation in the life course. Psychological Bulletin, 121(3), 355–370.

encouragement, confidences, and loyalty Berndt, T. J. (2002). Friendship quality and social development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(1), 7–10.

personal thoughts, joys, hurts, and fears of being hurt Buhrmester, D., & Furman, W. (1987). The development of companionship and intimacy. Child Development, 58(4), 1101–1113.

and, L’Abate, L. (2013). [Review of the book The science of intimate relationships by Garth Fletcher, Jeffry A. Simpson, Lorne Campbell, and Nikola C. Overall]. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 41(5), 456.

See also, Brehm, S. S. (1992). Intimate relationships: The McGraw-Hill series in social psychology (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

creating shared meaning Weingarten, K. (1991). The discourses of intimacy: Adding a social constructionist and feminist view. Family Process, 30(3), 285–305.

and, Wynne, L. C. (1984). The epigenesis of relational systems: A model for understanding family development. Family Process, 23(3), 297–318.

take a clear stand on emotionally charged issues This is a close paraphrase of Lerner, H. G. (1989). The dance of intimacy: A woman’s guide to courageous acts of change in key relationships. New York, NY: Harper Paperbacks, p. 3.

I first encountered it in, Weingarten, K. (1991). The discourses of intimacy: Adding a social constructionist and feminist view. Family Process, 30(3), 285–305.

other cultures don’t view intimacy as a necessity Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R. I. (1993). Love, sex & intimacy: Their psychology, biology & history. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

and, Hook, M. K., Gerstein, L. H., Detterich, L., & Gridley, B. (2003). How close are we? Measuring intimacy and examining gender differences. Journal of Counseling & Development, 81(4), 462–472.

Women are more focused . . . on commitment and continuity Luepnitz, D.A. (1988). The family interpreted: Feminist theory in clinical practice. New York, NY: Basic Books.

men on sexual and physical closeness Ridley, J. (1993). Gender and couples: Do women and men seek different kinds of intimacy? Sexual and Marital Therapy 8(3), 243–253.

Intimacy, love, and passion . . . belong to completely different, multidimensional constructs Acker, M., & Davis, M. H. (1992). Intimacy, passion and commitment in adult romantic relationships: A test of the triangular theory of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 9(1), 21–50.

and, Graham, J. M. (2011). Measuring love in romantic relationships: A meta-analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28(6), 748–771.

and, Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119.

Just like our chimpanzee cousins Hare, B., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Chimpanzees deceive a human competitor by hiding. Cognition, 101(3), 495–514.

and, McNally, L., & Jackson, A. L. (2013). Cooperation creates selection for tactical deception. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1762).

Modern intimacy is much more varied Amirmoayed, A. (2012). [Review of the book Intimacy and power: The dynamics of personal relationships in modern society by D. Layder]. Sociology, 46(3), 566–568.

intimacy was rarely regarded with the importance Wynne, L. C., & Wynne, A. R. (1986). The quest for intimacy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 12(4), 383–394.

99% of our history Bryson, B. (2010). At home: A short history of private life. New York, NY: Doubleday, p. 323.

People in a relationship experience better health Cohen, S., Frank, E., Doyle, W. J., Skoner, D. P., Rabin, B. S., & Gwaltney Jr., J. M., (1998). Types of stressors that increase susceptibility to the common cold in healthy adults. Health Psychology, 17(3), 214–223.

and, Hampson, S. E., Goldberg, L. R., Vogt, T. M., & Dubanoski, J. P. (2006). Forty years on: Teachers’ assessments of children’s personality traits predict self-reported health behaviors and outcomes at midlife. Health Psychology, 25(1), 57–64.

recover from illnesses more quickly Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., Loving, T. J., Stowell, J. R., Malarkey, W. B., Lemeshow, S., Dickinson, S. L., & Glaser, R. (2005). Hostile marital interactions, proinflammatory cytokine production, and wound healing. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(12), 1377–1384.

live longer Gallo, L. C., Troxel, W. M., Matthews, K. A., & Kuller, L. H. (2003). Marital status and quality in middle-aged women: Associations with levels and trajectories of cardiovascular risk factors. Health Psychology, 22(5), 453–463.

and, Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.

the presence of a satisfying intimate relationship Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(1), 81–84. In this paragraph, I’m closely paraphrasing the excellent article by Finkel, et al. Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

to be agreeable is to be cooperative Knack, J. M., Jacquot, C., Jensen-Campbell, L. A., & Malcolm, K. T. (2013). Importance of having agreeable friends in adolescence (especially when you are not). Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(12), 2401–2413.

show up early in childhood Hampson, S. E., & Goldberg, L. R. (2006). A first large cohort study of personality trait stability over the 40 years between elementary school and midlife. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 763–779.

and, Rothbart, M. K., & Ahadi, S. A. (1994). Temperament and the development of personality. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103(1), 55–66.

and, Shiner, R. L., Masten, A. S., & Roberts, J. M. (2003). Childhood personality foreshadows adult personality and life outcomes two decades later. Journal of Personality, 71(6), 1145–1170.

undesirable emotions such as anger and frustration Ahadi, S. A., & Rothbart, M. K. (1994). Temperament, development and the Big Five. In C. F. Halverson Jr., G. A. Kohnstamm, & R. P. Martin (Eds.), The developing structure of temperament and personality from infancy to adulthood (pp. 189–207). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

being an agreeable person is a tremendous advantage Knack, J. M., Jacquot, C., Jensen-Campbell, L. A., & Malcolm, K. T. (2013). Importance of having agreeable friends in adolescence (especially when you are not). Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(12), 2401–2413.

guided by what our friends are doing Knack, J. M., Jacquot, C., Jensen-Campbell, L. A., & Malcolm, K. T. (2013). Importance of having agreeable friends in adolescence (especially when you are not). Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(12), 2401–2413.

a sign of maturity Kohlberg, L. (1971). Stages of moral development. In C. Beck & E. Sullivan (Eds.), Moral education (pp. 23–92). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

having a friend who is agreeable Boulton, M. J., Trueman, M., Chau, C., Whitehead, C., & Amatya, K. (1999). Concurrent and longitudinal links between friendship and peer victimization: Implications for befriending interventions. Journal of Adolescence, 22(4), 461–466.

girls benefit more than boys Schmidt, M. E., & Bagwell, C. L. (2007). The protective role of friendships in overtly and relationally victimized boys and girls. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 53(3), 439–460.

strong sorting patterns Hitsch, G. J., Hortaçsu, A., & Ariely, D. (2010). What makes you click?—Mate preferences in online dating. Quantitative Marketing and Economics, 8(4), 393–427.

newspapers in the early 1700s Cocks, H. G. (2009). Classified: The secret history of the personal column. London, UK: Random House.

and, Orr, A. (2004). Meeting, mating, and cheating: Sex, love, and the new world of online dating. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Reuters Prentice Hall.

providing a list of attributes or qualities Orr, A. (2004). Meeting, mating, and cheating: Sex, love, and the new world of online dating. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Reuters Prentice Hall.

one-third of all marriages in America Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S., Gonzaga, G. C., Ogburn, E. L., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2013). Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(25), 10135–10140.

a fraction of that in the decade before Fewer than one percent of Americans met romantic partners through personal ads in the 1980s and early 1990s according to national surveys. Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., & Michaels, S. (1994). The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

and, Simenauer, J., & Carroll, D. (1982). Singles: The new Americans. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Half of these marriages Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S., Gonzaga, G. C., Ogburn, E. L., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2013). Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(25), 10135–10140.

In 1995, it was still so rare Randall, D., Hamilton, C., & Kerr, E. (2013, June 9). We just clicked: More and more couples are meeting online and marrying. The Independent.

around 1999–2000 Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

twenty years after the introduction of online dating People born before 1960 didn’t typically encounter the Internet until they were well into adulthood, and many treated it skeptically at first, based on stories of cybercrime, identity theft, and other problems that still exist. When problems are attached to a new and unfamiliar medium, people are less likely to use it. For people born after 1990, the Internet was so well established that they regarded its hazards as they would hazards of any other established medium. We know that checking accounts and credit cards are subject to identity theft but they’ve been around a long time and we accept the risks. If a new alternative emerged—as PayPal did in 1998—the low cost of shifting to it is offset by the perception that it is at least as risky as the status quo. But if PayPal was woven into the fabric of your very first Internet interactions, and presented as simply an alternative to other preexisting financial instruments, the barriers for adopting it are lower.

heavy Internet users who are introverted Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukophadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? American Psychologist, 53(9), 1017–1031.

and, Stevens, S. B., & Morris, T. L. (2007). College dating and social anxiety: Using the Internet as a means of connecting to others. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 10(5), 680–688.

decline in empathy among college students This is a direct quote from Gopnik, A. (2014, February 14). The information: How the internet gets inside us. The New Yorker, 123–128.

He goes on to cite Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York, NY: Basic Books.

far less likely to say that it is valuable This is a direct quote from Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York, NY: Basic Books.

access, communication, matching, and asynchrony Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

The field of eligibles Kerckhoff, A. C. (1964). Patterns of homogamy and the field of eligibles. Social Forces, 42(3), 289–297.

access to millions of profiles Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

there is a disconnect Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

“can elicit an evaluative, assessment-oriented mind-set . . .” Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

cognitive and decision overload Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66.

and, Wilson, T. D., & Schooler, J. W. (1991). Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(2), 181–192.

and, Wu, P-L., & Chiou, W-B. (2009). More options lead to more searching and worse choices in finding partners for romantic relationships online: An experimental study. CyberPsychology, 12(3), 315–318.

when cognitive resources are low Martin, L. L., Seta, J. J., & Crelia, R. A. (1990). Assimilation and contrast as a function of people’s willingness and ability to expend effort in forming an impression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 27–37.

There’s also a mathematical principle at work: The temptation to search in the hope of finding a better match causes the online dater to read profiles that are increasingly far afield from the good matches, thereby reducing the average quality of matches in the selection set. Decision overload sets in, and daters make poorer choices as they become less selective.

availability of attractive alternatives Lydon, J. E. (2010). How to forego forbidden fruit: The regulation of attractive alternatives as a commitment mechanism. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(8), 635–644.

81% lie Toma, C. L., Hancock, J. T., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1023–1036.

age discrepancies of ten years were observed Toma, C. L., Hancock, J. T., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1023–1036.

they’re Republicans Toma, C. L., Hancock, J. T., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1023–1036.

underlying tension Rosenbloom, S. (2011, November 12). Love, lies and what they learned. The New York Times, p. ST1.

22% lower risk Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S., Gonzaga, G. C., Ogburn, E. L., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2013). Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(25), 10135–10140.

how well do we know Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

and, Eyal, T., & Epley, N. (2010). How to seem telepathic: Enabling mind reading by matching construal. Psychological Science, 21(5), 700–705.

and, Kenny, D. A. (1994). Interpersonal perception: A social relations analysis. New York, NY: The Guilford Press, p. 159.

thought they were getting eight out of ten Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 10–12.

they were accurate in detecting liars 70% of the time This is a direct quote from Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 12.

See also, Swann, W. B., Silvera, D. H., & Proske, C. U. (1995). On “knowing your partner”: Dangerous illusions in the age of AIDS? Personal Relationships, 2(3), 173–186.

We are very bad at telling if someone is lying Bond Jr., C. F., & DePaulo, B. M. (2006). Accuracy of deception judgments. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 314–234.

The opposite misreading of intentions This paragraph quotes nearly directly from Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Deepwater Horizon oil rig Urbina, I. (2010, July 22). Workers on doomed rig voiced safety concerns. The New York Times, p. A1.

malpractice lawsuits were cut in half Kachalia, A., Kaufman, S. R., Boothman, R., Anderson, S., Welch, K., Saint, S., & Rogers, M. A. M. (2010). Liability claims and costs before and after implementation of a medical error disclosure program. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153(4), 213–221.

The biggest impediment to resolution This is a direct quote from Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 185.

See also, Chen, P. W. (2010, August 19). When doctors admit their mistakes. The New York Times.

and, Kachalia, A., Kaufman, S. R., Boothman, R., Anderson, S., Welch, K., Saint, S., & Rogers, M. A. M. (2010). Liability claims and costs before and after implementation of a medical error disclosure program. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153(4), 213–221.

When we’re confronted with the human element This is a paraphrase from Epley of a quote from Richard Boothman, Chief Risk Officer for the University of Michigan hospital that participated in the disclosure study. Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 185.

little white lies Camden, C., Motley, M. T., & Wilson, A. (1984). White lies in interpersonal communication: A taxonomy and preliminary investigation of social motivations. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 48(4), 309–325.

and, Erat, S., & Gneezy, U. (2012). White lies. Management Science, 58(4), 723–733.

and, Scott, G. G. (2006). The truth about lying: Why and how we all do it and what to do about it. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.

and, Talwar, V., Murphy, S. M., & Lee, K. (2007). White lie-telling in children for politeness purposes. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 31(1), 1–11.

Paul Grice called these implicatures Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3). New York, NY: Academic Press.

also available in, Levitin, D. J. (2010). Foundations of cognitive psychology: Core readings (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

in which the speaker utters Searle, J. R. (1991). Indirect speech acts. In S. Davis (Ed.), Pragmatics: A reader (pp. 265-277). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

social rejection causes activation Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294–300.

and, Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292.

and, MacDonald, G., & Leary, M. R. (2005). Why does social exclusion hurt? The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin, 131(2), 202–223, p. 202.

people’s experience of social pain DeWall, C. N., MacDonald, G., Webster, G. D., Masten, C. L., Baumeister, R. F., Powell, C., . . . Eisenberger, N. I. (2010). Acetaminophen reduces social pain: Behavioral and neural evidence. Psychological Science, 21(7), 931–937.

if we’re lucky, is one hundred percent clear Searle, J. R. (1965). What is a speech act? In R. J Stainton (Ed.), Perspectives in the philosophy of language: A concise anthology, 2000 (pp. 253–268). Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. I’m paraphrasing and simplifying the story liberally; Searle’s own account is much better and funnier.

information can become updated through social contracts Turner, C. (1987). Organizing information: Principles and practice. London, UK: Clive Bingley.

we now know Ernie’s a liar Sesame Street (1970, April 23). Ernie eats cake. [Television series episode]. In Sesame Street (Season 1, Episode 119). New York, NY: Children’s Television Workshop.

can’t be trusted Turner, C. (1987). Organizing information: Principles and practice. London, UK: Clive Bingley.

Pluto is no longer a planet National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (n.d.). Pluto: Overview. Retrieved from https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Pluto

conversations are a cooperative undertaking Shannon, B. (1987). Cooperativeness and implicature—A reversed perspective. New Ideas in Psychology, 5(2), 289–293.

pretense, sarcasm, or any nonliteral speech Anderson, J. S., Lange, N., Froehlich, A., DuBray, M. B., Druzgal, T. J., Froimowitz, M. P., . . . Lainhart, J. E. (2010). Decreased left posterior insular activity during auditory language in autism. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 31(1), 131–139.

and, Harris, G. J., Chabris, C. F., Clark, J., Urban, T., Aharon, I., Steele, S., . . . Tager-Flusberg, H. (2006). Brain activation during semantic processing in autism spectrum disorders via functional magnetic resonance imaging. Brain and Cognition, 61(1), 54–68.

and, Wang, A. T., Lee, S. S., Sigman, M., & Dapretto, M. (2006). Neural basis of irony comprehension in children with autism: The role of prosody and context. Brain, 129(4), 932–943.

an orgasm, oxytocin is released Blaicher, W., Gruber, D., Bieglmayer, C., Blaicher, A. M., Knogler, W., & Huber, J. C. (1999). The role of oxytocin in relation to female sexual arousal. Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation, 47(2), 125–126.

and, Carmichael, M. S., Humbert, R., Dixen, J., Palmisano, G., Greenleaf, W., & Davidson, J. M. (1987). Plasma oxytocin increases in the human sexual response. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 64(1), 27–31.

See also, Diamond, L. M. (2004). Emerging perspectives on distinctions between romantic love and sexual desire. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(3), 116–119.

and, Young, L. J., & Wang, Z. (2004). The neurobiology of pair bonding. Nature Neuroscience, 7(10), 1048–1054.

viewed while oxytocin was in their system Most of this section is based on information in Chanda, M. L., & Levitin, D. J. (2013). The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), 179–193.

recover more fully and more quickly Blazer, D. G. (1982). Social support and mortality in an elderly community population. American Journal of Epidemiology, 115(5), 684–694.

and, Broadhead, W. E., Kaplan, B. H., James, S. A., Wagner, E. H., Schoenbach, V. J., Grimson, R., . . . Gehlbach, S. H. (1983). The epidemiologic evidence for a relationship between social support and health. American Journal of Epidemiology, 117(5), 521–537.

and, Wills, T. A., & Ainette, M. G. (2012). Social networks and social support. In A. Baum, T. A. A. Revenson, & J. Singer (Eds.), Handbook of Health Psychology (pp. 465–492). New York, NY: Psychology Press, p. 465.

Its real role is to organize social behavior Oxytocin is not prosocial per se, but rather, regulates stress and anxiety, affective motivational states, and/or perceptual selectivity related to social information.

Bartz, J. A., & Hollander, E. (2006). The neuroscience of affiliation: Forging links between basic and clinical research on neuropeptides and social behavior. Hormones and Behavior, 50(4), 518–528.

and, Bartz, J. A., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. N. (2011). Social effects of oxytocin in humans: context and person matter. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(7), 301–309.

and, Chanda, M. L., & Levitin, D. J. (2013). The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), 179–193.

music has been shown to increase oxytocin levels Grape, C., Sandgren, M., Hansson, L. O., Ericson, M., & Theorell, T. (2003). Does singing promote well-being?: An empirical study of professional and amateur singers during a singing lesson. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 38(1), 65–74.

and, Nilsson, U. (2009). Soothing music can increase oxytocin levels during bed rest after open-heart surgery: A randomised control trial. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 18(15), 2153–2161.

mate from emotional (and physical) outbursts Insel, T. R. (2010). The challenge of translation in social neuroscience: A review of oxytocin, vasopressin, and affiliative behavior. Neuron, 65(6), 768–779.

and, Young, L. J., Nilsen, R., Waymire, K. G., MacGregor, G. R., & Insel, T. R. (1999). Increased affiliative response to vasopressin in mice expressing the V1a receptor from a monogamous vole. Nature, 400(6746), 766–768.

(when the rats could get up off the couch) Trezza, V., Baarendse, P. J., & Vanderschuren, L. J. (2010). The pleasures of play: Pharmacological insights into social reward mechanisms. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 31(10), 463–469.

and, Trezza, V., & Vanderschuren, L. J. (2008). Bidirectional cannabinoidmodulation of social behavior in adolescent rats. Psychopharmacology, 197(2), 217–227.

themselves in terms of situations I thank Jason Rentfrow for this demonstration and formulation. Rentfrow, J., personal communication. November 4, 2013.

See also, Rothbart, M., Dawes, R., & Park, B. (1984). Stereotyping and sampling biases in intergroup perception. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 109–134). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, p. 125.

and, Watson, D. (1982). The actor and the observer: How are their perceptions of causality divergent? Psychological Bulletin, 92(3), 682–700.

Gilbert calls this the “invisibility” problem Gilbert, D. T. & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117(1), 21–38.

students at the Princeton Theological Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). “From Jersulem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(1), 100–108.

“It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready . . .” I’m simplifying here—the actual study had three conditions and forty participants. The three conditions were high hurry, intermediate hurry, and low hurry. But the starkest contrast and the most interesting two conditions for the hypothesis are the high and low hurry conditions, and so that is what I’m reporting here.

Lee Ross and his colleagues Ross, L. D., Amabile, T. M., & Steinmetz, J. L. (1977). Social roles, social control, and biases in social-perception processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(7), 485–494, p. 485.

“What team won the 1969 World Series?” The actual questions from the Ross experiment are not reported in the literature, but these examples illustrate the kind, scope, and breadth of what the Questioners asked. The questions about Auden and glaciers do come from their original report. Ross, L., personal communication. January, 1991.

unlikely the Contestant would know Ross, L. D., Amabile, T. M., & Steinmetz, J. L. (1977). Social roles, social control, and biases in social-perception processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(7), 485–494, p. 485.

the cognitive illusion of the fundamental The fundamental attribution error has received lots of critiques, including that social, and not just inferential processes are at work, see, e.g. Gawronski, B. (2004). Theory-based bias correction in dispositional inference: The fundamental attribution error is dead, long live the correspondence bias. European Review of Social Psychology, 15(1), 183–217.

and also, it may be unique to Western culture, reflecting an individualist bias:

Clarke, S. (2006). Appealing to the fundamental attribution error: Was it all a big mistake? In D. Coady (Ed.), Conspiracy theories: The philosophical debate (pp. 130–140). Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.

and, Hooghiemstra, R. (2008). East-West differences in attributions for company performance: A content analysis of Japanese and U.S. corporate annual reports. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39(5), 618–629.

and, Langdridge, D., & Butt, T. (2004). The fundamental attribution error: A phenomenological critique. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43(3), 357–369.

and, Truchot, D., Maure, G., & Patte, S. (2003). Do attributions change over time when the actor’s behavior is hedonically relevant to the perceiver? The Journal of Social Psychology, 143(2), 202–208.

outcome-bias-based inference Mackie, D. M., Allison, S. T., Worth, L. T., & Asuncion, A. G. (1992). The generalization of outcome-biased counter-stereotypic inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(1), 43–64.

Jolie passed a difficult college course This example comes from Mackie, D. M., Allison, S. T., Worth, L. T., & Asuncion, A. G. (1992). The generalization of outcome-biased counter-stereotypic inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(1), 43–64.

people continue to conclude Allison, S. T., & Messick, D. M. (1985). The group attribution error. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21(6), 563–579.

and, Mackie, D. M., Allison, S. T., Worth, L. T., & Asuncion, A. G. (1992). The generalization of outcome-biased counter-stereotypic inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(1), 43–64.

and, Schaller, M. (1992). In-group favoritism and statistical reasoning in social inference: Implications for formation and maintenance of group stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(1), 61–74.

Reliance on such primal unconscious cues Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

and, Mackie, D. M., Allison, S. T., Worth, L. T., & Asuncion, A. G. (1992). The generalization of outcome-biased counter-stereotypic inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(1), 43–64.

“The jury will disregard that last exchange,” Rachlinski, J. J., Wistrich, A. J., & Guthrie, C. (2005). Can judges ignore inadmissible information? The difficulty of deliberately disregarding. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 153(4), 1251–1345.

the data it provided are valid Anderson, C. A., & Kellam, K. L. (1992). Belief perseverance, biased assimilation, and covariation detection: The effects of hypothetical social theories and new data. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18(5), 555–565.

and, Bonabeau, E. (2009). Decisions 2.0: The power of collective intelligence. MIT Sloan Management Review, 50(2), 45–52.

and, Carretta, T. R., & Moreland, R. L. (1982). Nixon and Watergate: A field demonstration of belief perseverance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8(3), 446–453.

and, Guenther, C. L., & Alicke, M. D. (2008). Self-enhancement and belief perseverance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(3), 706–712.

Even the emotional qualities of a decision linger when the evidence has been invalidated. Sherman, D. K., & Kim, H. S. (2002). Affective perseverance: The resistance of affect to cognitive invalidation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(2), 224–237.

Undergraduate men were brought Nisbett, R. E., & Valins, S. (1972). Perceiving the causes of one’s own behavior. In D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 63–78). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

and, Valins, S. (2007). Persistent effects of information about internal reactions: Ineffectiveness of debriefing. In H. London & R. E. Nisbett (Eds.), Thought and feeling: The cognitive alteration of feeling states. Chicago, IL: Aldine Transaction.

See the following for an interesting counter-perspective on the ubiquity of the fundamental attribution error, and the circumstances that will evoke it: Malle, B. F. (2006). The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis. Psychogical Bulletin, 132(6), 895–919.

fluctuations in rate had been predetermined At a predetermined point in the experiment, the heart rate increased greatly, indicating the highest possible levels of arousal and, by implication, attractiveness. It’s not the case that one of the women was universally regarded as more attractive than the others—this factor was randomized so that the heart rate peaked on different pictures for men in the experiment.

the results of this process are relatively persistent This is nearly a direct quote from Valins, S. (2005). Persistent effects of information about internal reactions: Ineffectiveness of debriefing. Integrative Physiological & Behavioral Science, 40(3), 161–165.

Nicholas Epley says Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

primary dividing dimension Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

by its own members than by outsiders Rothbart, M., Dawes, R., & Park, B. (1984). Stereotyping and sampling biases in intergroup perception. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 109–134). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

medial prefrontal cortex D’Argembeau, A., Ruby, P., Collette, F., Degueldre, C., Balteau, E., Luxen, A., . . . Salmon, E. (2007). Distinct regions of the medial prefrontal cortex are associated with self-referential processing and perspective taking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(6), 935–944.

and, Mitchell, J. P., Banaji, M. R., & MacRae, C. N. (2005). The link between social cognition and self-referential thought in the medial prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(8), 1306–1315.

and, Northoff, G., & Bermpohl, F. (2004). Cortical midline structures and the self. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 102–107.

daydreaming mode is active D’Argembeau, A., Ruby, P., Collette, F., Degueldre, C., Balteau, E., Luxen, A., . . . Salmon, E. (2007). Distinct regions of the medial prefrontal cortex are associated with self-referential processing and perspective taking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(6), 935–944.

and, Gusnard, D. A., Akbudak, E., Shulman, G. L., & Raichle, M. E. (2001). Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: Relation to a default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(7), 4259–4264.

and, Mitchell, J. P., Banaji, M. R., & MacRae, C. N. (2005). The link between social cognition and self-referential thought in the medial prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(8), 1306–1315.

flimsiest of premises Rabbie, J. M., & Horwitz, M. (1969). Arousal of ingroup-outgroup bias by a chance win or loss. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(3), 269–277, p. 269.

interdependence of fate Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts: Selected papers on group dynamics. Oxford, UK: Harper.

similar flimsy manipulations lead If all this seems far-fetched, the underlying mechanism at work may simply be related to self-esteem. As University of Oregon psychologist Mick Rothbart says, we wish to enhance our own esteem by exalting the groups that are similar to us, and disparaging those that are different. Consider the finding by Robert Cialdini that when people were led by the experimenters to experience a loss of self-esteem, this significantly influenced the way they felt about their favorite sports team: They were more likely to refer to a winning home team as “we” and a losing home team as “they.”

Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(3), 366–375.

and, Rothbart, M., Dawes, R., & Park, B. (1984). In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 109–134). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

the partitioning of people Rothbart, M., & Hallmark, W. (1988). In-group-out-group differences in the perceived efficacy of coercion and conciliation in resolving social conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(2), 248–257.

generalizations about entire classes of people There are additional explanations for racism beyond the cognitive one I present here. See, for example, Brown, R. (2010). Prejudice: Its social psychology, (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons.

and, Major, B., & O’Brien, L. T. (2005). The social psychology of stigma. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 393–421.

and, Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. D. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist, 60(1), 16–26, p. 16.

Mick Rothbart taught a class Rothbart, M., Dawes, R., & Park, B. (1984). Stereotyping and sampling biases in intergroup perception. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 109–134). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, p. 112.

In cases of in-group/out-group bias This is nearly a direct quote from Rothbart, M., Dawes, R., & Park, B. (1984). Stereotyping and sampling biases in intergroup perception. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 109–134). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, p. 112.

members of groups get to know one another This is called intergroup contact theory. Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783.

“to have demonstrated this phenomenon . . .” Rothbart, M., Dawes, R., & Park, B. (1984). Stereotyping and sampling biases in intergroup perception. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment (pp. 109–134). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, p. 113.

we tend not to reevaluate the stereotype Rothbart, M., & Lewis, S. (1988). Inferring category attributes from exemplar attributes: Geometric shapes and social categories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(5), 861–872.

Caribbean Crisis of 1962 Garthoff, R. L. (1988). Cuban missile crisis: The Soviet story. Foreign Policy, 72, 61–80.

“try to put yourself in our place.” Khrushchev, N. (1962, October 24). Letter to President Kennedy. Kennedy Library, President’s Office Files, Cuba. No classification marking. This “official translation” prepared in the Department of State and an “informal translation” from the Embassy in Moscow (transmitted in telegram 1070, October 25; Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 304) are printed in Department of State Bulletin, November 19, 1973, pp. 637–639.

Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Kennedy-Krushchev exchanges: Document 63. In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 (6). Retrieved from http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d63

“If you are really concerned about the peace . . .” Khrushchev, N. (1962). Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the U.S. Department of State, October 26, 1962, 7 P.M. Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, USSR, Khrushchev Correspondence. Secret; Eyes Only; Niact; Verbatim Text. Passed to the White House at 9:15 P.M. October 26. Other copies of this message are in Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, and ibid.: Lot 77 D 163. A copy of the Russian-language text is in the former. This “informal translation” and an “official translation” prepared by the Department of State are printed in Department of State Bulletin, November 19, 1973, pp. 640–645.

and, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Kennedy-Krushchev exchanges: Document 65. In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 (6). Retrieved from http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d65

he turned Kennedy into an in-group member For an experimental replication of this, see Experiment 2 in Rothbart, M., & Hallmark, W. (1988). In-group-out-group differences in the perceived efficacy of coercion and conciliation in resolving social conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(2), 248–257.

During late 2013 and early 2014 Nearly a direct quote from Kirkpatrick, D. D. (2014, January 25). Prolonged fight feared in Egypt after bombings. The New York Times, p. A1.

we tend to think that coercion This sentence, and much of the preceding paragraph are from Rothbart, M., & Hallmark, W. (1988). In-group-out-group differences in the perceived efficacy of coercion and conciliation in resolving social conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(2), 248–257.

“When I think about all the money . . .” Shultz, G., personal communication. July, 2012, Sonoma County, CA.

(Argentina is one country that . . .) Articles 106–108 of the Argentine Penal Code, which include the provision in Article 106 “a person who endangers the life or health of another, either by putting a person in jeopardy or abandoning to their fate a person unable to cope alone who must be cared for [Author’s emphasis] . . . will be imprisoned for between 2 and 6 years.” Hassel, G. (n.d.). Penal especial [Special penalty]. Retrieved from http://www.monografias.com/trabajos52/penal-especial/penal-especial2.shtml

justifiable fears about what might happen Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383.

and, Milgram, S., & Hollander, P. (1964). The murder they heard. The Nation, 198(15), 602–604.

social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané say Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383, p. 377.

Walter Vance . . . died after collapsing in a Target Report: Shoppers unfazed as man dies at Target [Video file]. (2011, November 26). NBC News.

shoppers . . . stepped over a man Pocklington, R. (2013, Dec. 29). Shocking surveillance footage shows customers stepping over shooting victim as he lay dying in store doorway. Daily Mirror.

and, Hall, Jr. R. (2013, Dec. 23). Kalamazoo man convicted of murder in 2012 shooting of Jheryl Wright, 24. Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive.com.

strong desire to conform Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1–70.

social comparison theory: Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140.

Diffusion of responsibility extends Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383.

“When only one bystander is present . . .” Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383, p. 378.

Geese will come Kristof, N. D. (2008, July 31). A farm boy reflects. The New York Times.

and, Kristof, N. D. (2013, October 20). Are chicks brighter than babies? The New York Times, p. SR13.

vervet monkeys Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. (1990). How monkeys see the world: Inside the mind of another species. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

meerkats stand guard Santema, P., & Clutton-Brock, T. (2013). Meerkat helpers increase sentinel behaviour and bipedal vigilance in the presence of pups. Animal Behavior, 85(3), 655–661.

Oxytocin—the same social-affiliative hormone Madden, J. R., & Clutton-Brock, T. H. (2010). Experimental peripheral administration of oxytocin elevates a suite of cooperative behaviors in a wild social mammal. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 278(1709), 1189–1194.

CHAPTER 5

Ruth was a thirty-seven-year-old This scenario is the only one not taken verbatim from the literature—it’s a composite sketch of several frontal lobe patients for illustrative purposes to give the reader a flavor of the dysfunctions. The basic details are taken from Penfield, W. (1935). The frontal lobe in man: A clinical study of maximum removals. Brain, 58(1), 115–133.

Ernie suddenly had lost the ability to properly evaluate future needs Eslinger, P. J., & Damasio, A. R. (1985). Severe disturbance of higher cognition after bilateral frontal lobe ablation: Patient EVR. Neurology, 35(12), 1731. The names here have been changed for patient privacy.

“I know what I want to draw, but I just don’t do it. . . .” Goel, V., & Grafman, J. (2000). Role of the right prefrontal cortex in ill-structured planning. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 17(5), 415–436, p. 423.

the light waves themselves are colorless Newton, I. (1995). The Principia (A. Motte, Trans.). New York, NY: Prometheus Books.

After nightfall, time was kept Lombardi, M. A. (2007, March 5). Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day? Scientific American.

and, Masters, K. (2006, April 5). Why is a day divided into 24 hours? Ask an astronomer. Retrieved from http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=594

Babylonians also used fixed duration Wright, A. (2008). Glut: Mastering information through the ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 257.

as did Hipparchus, the ancient Greek North, J. D. (1975). Monasticism and the first mechanical clocks. In J. T. Fraser et al. (Eds.), The study of time II. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

roughly 150,000 people who die Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014, February 13). Deaths and mortality. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

and, Central Intelligence Agency (2010). The world factbook. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

and, De Grey, A. D. N. J. (2007). Life span extension research and public debate: Societal considerations. Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology, 1(1), 1941–6008.

bad effects at older ages Kirkwood, T. B. L., & Austad, S. N. (2000). Why do we age? Nature, 408(6809), 233–238.

genetic variations that challenge survival Kirkwood, T. B. L., & Austad, S. N. (2000). Why do we age? Nature, 408(6809), 233–238.

maximum number of times Shay, J. W., & Wright, W. E. (2000). Hayflick, his limit, and cellular ageing. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 1(1), 72–76.

60 to 100 beats per minute Laskowski, E. R. (2009, September 29). What’s a normal resting heart rate? Mayo Clinic. Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/heart-rate/AN01906

Photographs are interesting because I am grateful to David Crosby for this observation.

once every 250 milliseconds Roxin, A., Brunel, N., Hansel, D., Mongillo, G., & van Vreeswijk, C. (2011). On the distribution of firing rates in networks of cortical neurons. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(45), 16217–16226.

CEO of the brain U.S. HHS (2013). Maturation of the Prefrontal Cortex. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Population Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familylife/tech_assistance/etraining/adolescent_brain/Development/prefrontal_cortex/

connections between the prefrontal cortex Knight, R. T., & Stuss, D. T. (2002). Prefrontal cortex: The present and the future. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function (pp. 573–598). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

something that most animals lack Some nonhuman primates, notably chimps and monkeys, show an ability to delay gratification, and this is consistent with their developing, evolving prefrontal cortex.

and, Beran, M. J. (2013, May). Delay of gratification in nonhuman animals. Psychological Science Agenda. Retrieved from www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/05/nonhuman-animals.aspx

humans until after age twenty Beckman, M. (2004). Crime, culpability, and the adolescent brain. Science, 305(5684), 596–599.

and, Giedd, J. N., Blumenthal, J., Jeffries, N. O., Castellanos, F. X., Liu, H., Zijdenbos, A., . . . Rapoport, J. L. (1999). Brain development during childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal MRI study. Nature Neuroscience, 2(10), 861–863.

and, Sowell, E. R., Thompson, P. M., & Toga, A. W. (2004). Mapping changes in the human cortex throughout the span of life. The Neuroscientist, 10(4), 372–392.

and, Steinberg, L. (2004). Risk taking in adolescence: What changes, and why? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1021(1), 51–58.

dysexecutive syndrome Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

inhibiting the urge to imitate Lhermitte, F. (1983). “Utilization behaviour” and its relation to lesions of the frontal lobes. Brain, 106(2), 237–255.

revealing a failure in temporal control Knight, R. T., & Grabowecky, M. (2000). Prefrontal cortex, time, and consciousness. In M. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The new cognitive neurosciences (pp. 1319–1337). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

not aware of their deficit Prigatano, G.P. (1991). Disturbances of self-awareness of deficit after traumatic brain injury. In G. P. Prigatano & D. L. Schacter (Eds.), Awareness of deficit after brain injury: Clinical and theoretical issues (pp. 111–126). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

and, Stuss, D. T. (1991). Disturbances of self-awareness after frontal system damage. In G. P. Prigatano & D. L. Schacter (Eds.), Awareness of deficit after brain injury: Clinical and theoretical issues (pp. 63–83). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

resulting in a loss of creativity Knight, R. T., & Stuss, D. T. (2002). Prefrontal cortex: The present and the future. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Alcohol interferes . . . by disrupting dopamine receptors Trantham-Davidson, H., Burnett, E. J., Gass, J. T., Lopez, M. F., Mulholland, P. J., Centanni, S. W., . . . Chandler, L. J. (2014). Chronic alcohol disrupts dopamine receptor activity and the cognitive function of the medial prefrontal cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34(10), 3706–3718.

dopaminergic neurons in the frontal lobes Courchesne, E., Mouton, P. R., Calhoun, M. E., Semendeferi, K., Ahrens-Barbeau, C., Hallet, M. J., . . . Pierce, K. (2011). Neuron number and size in prefrontal cortex of children with autism. JAMA, 306(18), 2001–2010.

administration of L-dopa Arnsten, A. F. T., & Dudley, A. G. (2005). Methylphenidate improves prefrontal cortical cognitive function through α2 adrenoceptor and dopamine D1 receptor actions: Relevance to therapeutic effects in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 1(1), 2.

and, Owen, A. M., Sahakian, B. J., Hodges, J. R., Summers, B. A., Polkey, C. E., & Robbins, T. W. (1995). Dopamine-dependent frontostriatal planning deficits in early Parkinson’s disease. Neuropsychology, 9(1), 126–140.

and, Tucha, L., Tucha, O., Sontag, T. A., Stasik, D., Laufkötter, R., & Lange, K. W. (2011). Differential effects of methylphenidate on problem solving in adults with ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 15(2), 161–173.

brain . . . consumes 20% of all the energy the body uses Clarke, D. D., & Sokoloff, L. (1999). Circulation and energy metabolism of the brain: Substrates of cerebral metabolism. In G. J. Siegel, B. W. Agranoff, R. W. Albers, S. K. Fisher, & M. D. Uhler (Eds.), Basic neurochemistry: Molecular, cellular and medical aspects (6th ed.) (pp. 637–669). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott-Raven.

voltage output of a single resting neuron The resting potential of a typical neuron is -70 mV, meaning that it has a negative charge, and the output of an iPod is positively charged.

Playing music to the owl Janata, P. (1997). Electrophysiological studies of auditory contexts. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, University of Oregon.

Chemicals are released . . . flow of information in the brain Direct quote from Anderson, D. (2011). Your brain is more than a bag of chemicals. [Video] TedX CalTech.

neurons . . . get that energy from glucose Clarke, D. D., & Sokoloff, L. (1999). Circulation and energy metabolism of the brain: Substrates of cerebral metabolism. In G. J. Siegel, B. W. Agranoff, R. W. Albers, S. K. Fisher, & M. D. Uhler (Eds.), Basic neurochemistry: Molecular, cellular and medical aspects (6th ed.) (pp. 637–669). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott-Raven.

and, Sokoloff, L., Reivich, M., Kennedy, C., Des Rosiers, M. H., Patlak, C. S., Pettigrew, K. E. A., . . . Shinohara, M. (1977). The [14C]deoxyglucose method for the measurement of local cerebral glucose utilization: Theory, procedure, and normal values in the conscious and anesthetized albino rat. Journal of Neurochemistry, 28(5), 897–916.

except the testes Himwich, H. E., & Nahum, L. H. (1929). The respiratory quotient of testicle. American Journal of Physiology, 88(4), 680–685.

and, Setchell, B. P., & Waites, G. M. H. (1964). Blood flow and the uptake of glucose and oxygen in the testis and epididymis of the ram. Journal of Physiology, 171(3), 411–425.

eating or drinking glucose improves performance Hoyland, A., Lawton, C. L., Dye, L. (2008). Acute effects of macronutrient manipulations on cognitive test performance in healthy young adults: A systematic research review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 32(1), 72–85.

and, Riby, L. M., Law, A. S., McLaughlin, J., & Murray, J. (2011). Preliminary evidence that glucose ingestion facilitates prospective memory performance. Nutrition Research, 31(5), 370–377.

and, Scholey, A. B., Harper, S., & Kennedy, D. O. (2001). Cognitive demand and blood glucose. Physiology & Behavior, 73(4), 585–592.

additional mental energy Harvard Medical School. (2004, July.). Calories burned in thirty minutes for people of three different weights. Harvard Heart Letter. The number of calories depends on your weight—this is for a 150-pound person; add or subtract eight calories for each 25 pounds you add to or subtract from this.

connecting neurons to one another Harris, J. J., Jolivet, R., & Attwell, D. (2012). Synaptic energy use and supply. Neuron, 75(5), 762–777.

a seamless thread of data coming in Kastenbaum, S. (Producer). (2012, May 26). Texting while walking a dangerous experiment in multitasking [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/26/texting-while-walking-a-dangerous-experiment-in-multitasking/

“. . . think in-depth about anything.” Quoted in Tuged, A. (2008, October 25). Multitasking can make you lose . . . um . . . focus. The New York Times, p. B7.

brain’s arousal system has a novelty bias Tucker, D. M. (1987, May). Hemisphere specialization: A mechanism for unifying anterior and posterior brain regions. In D. Ottoson (Chair), Duality and unity of the brain: Unified functioning and specialization of the hemispheres (pp. 180–193). Symposium conducted at The Wenner-Gren Center, Stockholm, Sweden. New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Humans will work just as hard Nearly a direct quote from Gopnik, A. (2011, May 22). The great illusion. [Review of the book Soul Dust by N. Humphrey]. The New York Times Book Review, p. 19.

trade-off between focus and creativity: Some creative musicians who need to engage in repetitious tasks such as digital audio editing report that they take drugs that enhance dopamine when they have editing or practicing to do, but would never dream of taking those drugs when writing or performing music.

neurochemicals critical to paying attention US National Library of Medicine. (2007, September). Genetics home reference: Genes, COMT. Retrieved from http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/COMT

following instructions but are not especially creative Colzato, L. S., Waszak, F., Nieuwenhuis, S., Posthuma, D., Hommel, B. (2010). The flexible mind is associated with the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism: Evidence for a role of dopamine in the control of task-switching. Neuropsychologia, 48(9), 2764–2768.

and, He, Q., Xue, G., Chen, C., Lu, Z. L., Chen, C., Lei, X., . . . Bechara, A. (2012). COMT Val158Met polymorphism interacts with stressful life events and parental warmth to influence decision-making. Scientific Reports, 2(677).

represented in the hippocampus Eichenbaum, H. (2013). Memory on time. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(2), 81–88.

tons of vehicles, supplies, and personnel per day Kennard, M. F. (1947, April 11). The Building of Mulberry Harbour. The war illustrated, 10 (255), 771–772. London, UK: Amalgamated Press.

and, History Learning Site. (n.d.). The Mulberry Harbour. Retrieved from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk

(approximately 1.5 million cubic feet) A standard of English timber equals 165 cubic feet. Urquhart, G. D. (1869). Dues and charges on shipping in foreign ports: A manual of reference for the use of shipowners, shipbrokers, & shipmasters. London, UK: George Philip and Son, p. 185.

and, Chest of Books. (n.d.). Petersburg standard of timber. Retrieved from http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/mechanics/Cyclopaedia/Petersburg-Standard-Of-Timber.html#.UYW9jt2Qc3I

greatest engineering and military feats in human history Kennard, M. F. (1947, April 11). The Building of Mulberry Harbour. The war illustrated, 10 (255), 771–772. London, UK: Amalgamated Press.

the metabolic costs of multitasking Chevignard, M., Pillon, B., Pradat-Diehl, P., Taillefer, C., Rousseau, S., Le Bras, C., & Dubois, B. (2000). An ecological approach to planning dysfunction: Script execution. Cortex, 36(5), 649–669.

adaptive strategies for living daily life Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

a new rule without being prompted Knight, R. T., & Stuss, D. T. (2002). Prefrontal cortex: The present and the future. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

then they’ll oscillate at a different frequency Buschman, T. J., Denovellis, E. L., Diogo, C., Bullock, D., & Miller, E. K. (2012). Synchronous oscillatory neural ensembles for rules in the prefrontal cortex. Neuron, 76(4), 838–846.

the environment that are competing for attention Fallon, S. J., Williams-Gray, C. H., Barker, R. A., Owen, A. M., & Hampshire, A. (2013). Prefrontal dopamine levels determine the balance between cognitive stability and flexibility. Cerebral Cortex, 23(2), 361–369.

“. . . We take these for granted because we grew up with them.” Ferguson, J., personal communication. December 9, 2010.

novels, and short stories Gottschall, J. (2012). The storytelling animal: How stories make us human. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

and, Gottschall, J., & Wilson, D. S. (Eds.). (2005). The literary animal: Evolution and the nature of narrative (rethinking theory). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

our brains to make them Kurby, C. A., & Zacks, J. M. (2007). Segmentation in the perception and memory of events. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(2), 72–79.

modest number of meaningful units Kurby, C. A., & Zacks, J. M. (2007). Segmentation in the perception and memory of events. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(2), 72–79.

Humor in single-panel cartoons: Piraro, D., personal communication. March 8, 2014.

become more strongly encoded in memory Craik, F. I., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671–684.

classrooms with great success Crouch, C. H., & Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American Journal of Physics, 69(9), 970–977.

become accessible to us for retrieval This is nearly a direct quote from Kopasz, M., Loessl, B., Hornyak, M., Riemann, D., Nissen, C., Piosczyk, H., & Voderholzer, U. (2010). Sleep and memory in healthy children and adolescents—A critical review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 14(3), 167–177.

accomplished during distinct phases of sleep Kopasz, M., Loessl, B., Hornyak, M., Riemann, D., Nissen, C., Piosczyk, H., & Voderholzer, U. (2010). Sleep and memory in healthy children and adolescents—A critical review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 14(3), 167–177.

outside world that we hold inside our heads Diekelmann, S., & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 114–126.

and, Walker, M. P., & Stickgold, R. (2010). Overnight alchemy: Sleep-dependent memory evolution. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(3), 218.

confused with an actually occurring experience McClelland, J. L., McNaughton, B. L., & O’Reilly, R. C. (1995). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psychological Review, 102(3), 419–457.

processing that occur during sleep Walker, M. P., & Stickgold, R. (2010). Overnight alchemy: Sleep-dependent memory evolution. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(3), 218.

binds these together into a seamless whole As Walker & Stickgold (2010) write: “Overnight unitization has been seen using a sequential finger-tapping motor-skill task in which subjects learn to type numerical sequences, such as 4-1-3-2-1-3-2-1-4. During initial learning, subjects appear to break the sequence into “chunks” (e.g., 413-21-3214), separated by brief pauses. But following a night of sleep, the sequence becomes unitized, and is typed without pauses (i.e., 413213214).”

This passage describes the prior work of: Kuriyama, K., Stickgold, R., & Walker, M. P. (2004). Sleep-dependent learning and motor-skill complexity. Learning & Memory, 11(6), 705–713.

increase of ATP Dworak, M., McCarley, R. W., Kim, T., Kalinchuk, A. V., & Basheer, R. (2010). Sleep and brain energy levels: ATP changes during sleep. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30(26), 9007–9016.

equivalent period of being awake Barrett, T. R., & Ekstrand, B. R. (1972). Effect of sleep on memory: III. Controlling for time-of-day effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 96(2), 321–327.

and, Fischer, S., Hallschmid, M., Elsner, A. L., & Born, J. (2002). Sleep forms memory for finger skills. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(18), 11987–11991.

and, Huber, R., Ghilardi, M. F., Massimini, M., & Tononi, G. (2004). Local sleep and learning. Nature, 430(6995), 78–81.

and, Jenkins, J. G., & Dallenbach, K. M. (1924). Obliviscence during sleep and waking. American Journal of Psychology, 35(4), 605–612.

and, Plihal, W., & Born, J. (1997). Effects of early and late nocturnal sleep on declarative and procedural memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(4), 534–547.

and, Stickgold, R., James, L., & Hobson, J. A. (2000). Visual discrimination learning requires sleep after training. Nature Neuroscience, 3(12), 1237–1238.

and, Stickgold, R., Whidbee, D., Schirmer, B., Patel, V., & Hobson, J. A. (2000). Visual discrimination task improvement: A multi-step process occurring during sleep. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(2), 246–254.

and, Walker, M., Brakefield, T., Morgan, A., Hobson, J. A., & Stickgold, R. (2002). Practice with sleep makes perfect: Sleep dependent motor skill learning. Neuron, 35(1), 205–211.

performing it after one night’s sleep Allen, S. (2013). Memory stabilization and enhancement following music practice. Psychology of Music. Advance online publication. Retrieved from http://pom.sagepub.com

equivalent amount of waking time Wagner, U., Gais, S., Haider, H., Verleger, R., & Born, J. (2004). Sleep inspires insight. Nature, 427(6972), 352–355.

you’ll solve a problem requiring insight Wagner, U., Gais, S., Haider, H., Verleger, R., & Born, J. (2004). Sleep inspires insight. Nature, 427(6972), 352–355.

dreamed about abstract elements of the game Stickgold, R., Malia, A., Maguire, D., Roddenberry, D., & O’Connor, M. (2000). Replaying the game: Hypnagogic images in normals and amnesiacs. Science, 290(5490), 350–353.

dreams tend to be less elaborate Siegel, J. (2006). The stuff dreams are made of: Anatomical substrates of REM sleep. Nature Neuroscience, 9(6), 721–722.

increased levels of acetylcholine and cortisol Hasselmo, M. E. (1999). Neuromodulation: Acetylcholine and memory consolidation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(9), 351–359.

disparate brain regions during REM Jones, M. W., & Wilson, M. A. (2005). Theta rhythms coordinate hippocampal-prefrontal interactions in a spatial memory task. PLoS Biology, 3(12), e402.

bringing us from one state to the other Lu, J., Sherman, D., Devor, M., Saper, C. B. (2006, June 1). A putative flip-flop switch for control of REM sleep. Nature, 441, 589–594.

more later in the early morning hours Domhoff, G. W. (2002). The scientific study of dreams: Neural networks, cognitive development, and content analysis. Washington, DC: APA Press.

last 90 minutes of REM sleep in the morning Stickgold, R. (2005). Sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Nature, 437, 1272–1278.

and, American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Why sleep is important and what happens when you don’t get enough. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why.aspx?item=11

following two nights of good sleep Stickgold, R., James, L., & Hobson, J. A. (2000). Visual discrimination learning requires sleep after training. Nature Neuroscience, 3(12), 1237–1238.

fundamental property of neuronal metabolism Domhoff, G. W. (2002). The scientific study of dreams: Neural networks, cognitive development, and content analysis. Washington, DC: APA Press.

and, Xie, L., Hongyi, K., Qiwu, X., Chen, M. J., Yonghong, L., Meenakshisundaram, T., . . . Nedergaard, M. (2013). Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain. Science, 342(6156), 373–377.

that accumulate during waking thought Xie, L., Hongyi, K., Qiwu, X., Chen, M. J., Yonghong, L., Meenakshisundaram, T., . . . Nedergaard, M. (2013). Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain. Science, 342(6156), 373–377.

neurohormones are released to induce wakefulness Van Dongen, H. P. A., & Dinges, D. P. (2000). Circadian rhythms in fatigue, alertness, and performance. In M. H. Kryger, T. Roth, & W. C. Dement (Eds.), Principles and practice of sleep medicine (3rd ed.) (pp. 391–399). Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders.

and, Stenberg, D. (2007). Neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of sleep. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 64(10), 1187–1204.

performance for many days afterward Krueger, J. M., Rector, D. M., Roy, S., Van Dongen, H. P. A., Belenky, G., & Panksepp, J. (2008). Sleep as a fundamental property of neuronal assemblies. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(12), 910–919.

three-point shooting each improved Mah, C. D., Mah, K. E., Kezirian, E. J., & Dement, W. C. (2011). The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep, 34(7), 943.

second period of four or five hours of sleep Ekirch, A. R. (2006). At day’s close: Night in times past. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

and, Koslofsky, C. (2011). Evening’s empire: A history of the night in early modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

and, Wehr (1992). In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic. Journal of Sleep Research, 1(2), 103–107.

life satisfaction, efficiency, and performance Chiang, Y-Y., Tsai, P-Y., Chen, P-C., Yang, M-H., Li, C-Y., Sung, F-C., & Chen, K-B. (2012). Sleep disorders and traffic accidents. Epidemiology, 23(4), 643–644.

and, United States Census Bureau. (n.d.). Transportation: Motor vehicle accidents and fatalities. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/

guidelines from research suggest the following National Sleep Foundation. (n.d.). How much sleep do we really need? Retrieved from http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need

what is indicated, and this appears to be hereditary Hor, H., & Tafti, M. (2009). How much sleep do we need? Science, 325(5942), 825–826, p. 825.

eight hours at a stretch Van Dongen, H. P. A., & Dinges, D. P. (2000). Circadian rhythms in fatigue, alertness, and performance. In M. H. Kryger, T. Roth, & W. C. Dement (Eds.), Principles and practice of sleep medicine (3rd ed.) (pp. 391–399). Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders.

sleep deprivation a public health epidemic Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/features/dssleep/index.html#References

loss without adverse cognitive effects This sentence is a direct quote from U.S. Institute of Medicine Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research. (2006). Sleep disorders and sleep deprivation: An unmet public health problem. Colton, H. R. & Altevogt, B. M. (Eds.) Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Also available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19958/

See also, Dinges, D., Rogers, N., & Baynard, M. D. (2005). Chronic sleep deprivation. In M. H. Kryger, T. Roth, & W. C. Dement, (Eds.), Principles and practice of sleep medicine (4th ed.) (pp. 67–76). Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier/Saunders.

and, Nightly news: Sleep deprivation costs companies billions [Video file]. (2013, January 23). NBC News. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/

shooting people on their own side Kuruvilla, C. (2013, March 15). Captain of Air France plane that crashed into Atlantic Ocean killing everyone on board was running on one hour of sleep. New York Daily News.

and, Randall, D. K. (2012, August 3). Decoding the science of sleep. The Wall Street Journal.

and, U.S. Institute of Medicine Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research. (2006). Sleep disorders and sleep deprivation: An unmet public health problem. Colton, H. R. & Altevogt, B. M. (Eds.) Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Also available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19958/

some of the most well-known global disasters Harrison, Y., & Horne, J. A. (2000). The impact of sleep deprivation on decision-making: A review. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6(3), 236–249.

the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez U. S. National Transportation Safety Board. (1997). Marine accident report: Grounding of the U. S. tankship Exxon Valdez on Bligh Reeff, Prince William Sound, near Valdez, Alaska. NTSB Number MAR-90/04; PB90-916405. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

the cruise ship Star Princess U. S. National Transportation Safety Board (1997). Marine accident report: Grounding of the Liberian passenger ship Star Princess on Poundstone Rock, Lynn Canal, Alaska. NTSB Number MAR-97/02; PB97-916403. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.

See also, Brown, D. B. (2007). Legal implications of obstructive sleep apnea. In C. A. Kushida (Ed.), Obstructive sleep apnea: Diagnosis and treatment. New York, NY: Informa Healthcare USA.

the Challenger space shuttle Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (1986). Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.

roughly the same as the annual revenue CNN Money. (n.d.). Fortune global 500. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/

obesity, stroke, and cancer Randall, D. K. (2012, August 3). Decoding the science of sleep. The Wall Street Journal.

“. . . your life with your head on a pillow.” Randall, D. K. (2012). Dreamland: Decoding the science of sleep. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

more effective than the prescription drug Ambien Jacobs, G. D., Pace-Schott, E. F., Stickgold, R., & Otto, M. W. (2004). Cognitive behavior therapy and pharmacotherapy for insomnia: A randomized controlled trial and direct comparison. Archives of Internal Medicine, 164(17), 1888–1896.

groggy we were upon waking up Randall, D. K. (2012). Dreamland: Decoding the science of sleep. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

and, Randall, D. K. (2012, August 3). Decoding the science of sleep. The Wall Street Journal.

such as orexin, cortisol, and adrenaline Monti, J., Pandi-Perumal, S. R., Sinton, C. M., & Sinton, C. W. (Eds.). (2008). Neurochemistry of sleep and wakefulness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

and, Stenberg, D. (2007). Neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of sleep. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 64(10), 1187–1204.

counterproductive, though, causing sleep inertia Mayo Clinic. (n.d.). Napping: Do’s and don’ts for healthy adults. Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/napping/MY01383

benefits of napping are well established Nishida, M., Pearsall, J., Buckner, R. L., & Walker, M. P. (2009). REM sleep, prefrontal theta, and the consolidation of human emotional memory. Cerebral Cortex 19(5), 1158–1166.

the more intellectual the work Tucker, M. A., Hirota, Y., Wamsley, E. J., Lau, H., Chaklader, A., & Fishbein, W. (2006). A daytime nap containing solely non-REM sleep enhances declarative but not procedural memory. Neurobiology of Learning & Memory, 86(2), 241–247.

and, Wilson, J. K., Baran, B., Pace-Schott, E. F., Ivry, R. B., & Spencer, R. M. C. (2012). Sleep modulates word-pair learning but not motor sequence learning in healthy older adults. Neurobiology of Aging, 33(5), 991–1000.

a nap can turn around negative emotions Gujar, N., McDonald, S. A., Nishida, M., & Walker, M. P. (2011). A role for REM sleep in recalibrating the sensitivity of the human brain to specific emotions. Cerebral Cortex, 21(1), 115–123.

and, Mednick, S., Nakayama, K., & Stickgold, R. (2003). Sleep-dependent learning: A nap is as good as a night. Nature Neuroscience, 6(7), 697–698.

disease, diabetes, stroke, and heart attacks Markowitz, E. (2011, August 12). Should your employees take naps? Inc. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/

and, Naska, A., Oikonomou, E., Tichopoulou, A., Psaltopoulou, T., & Tichopoulous, D. (2007). Siesta in healthy adults and coronary mortality in the general population. JAMA Internal Medicine, 167(3), 296–301.

and, Stein, R. (2007, February 13). Midday naps found to fend off heart disease. The Washington Post.

Note there is some controversy about this. First, the effect was shown to be statistically significant for men but not for women; this is probably a statistical artifact in that too few women died of heart disease to create an adequate control group.

A separate study showed that daily naps were associated with increased risk of myocardial infarction, and another that napping is associated with increased risks of mortality of all kinds, although these, too, are confounded with culture.

See, Campos, H., & Siles, X. (2000). Siesta and the risk of coronary heart disease: Results from a population-based, case-control study in Costa Rica. International Journal of Epidemiology, 29(3), 429–437.

and, Tanabe, N., Iso, H., Seki, N., Suzuki, H., Yatsuya, H., Toyoshima, H., & Tamakshi, A. (2010) Daytime napping and mortality, with a special reference to cardiovascular disease: The JACC study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 39(1), 233–243.

many companies have dedicated nap rooms with cots Markowitz, E. (2011, August 12). Should your employees take naps? Inc. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/

eastward gave up more than one run Recht, L. D., Lew, R. A., & Schwartz, W. J. (1995). Baseball teams beaten by jet lag. Nature, 377(6550), 583.

including reductions in muscle strength Waterhouse, J., Reilly, T., Atkinson, G., & Edwards, B. (2007). Jet lag: Trends and coping strategies. Lancet, 369(9567), 1117–1129.

Individuals over the age of sixty Monk, T. (2005). Aging human circadian rhythms: Conventional wisdom may not always be right. Journal of Biological Rhythms, 20(4), 366–374.

and, Monk, T., Buysse, D., Carrier, J., & Kupfer, D. (2000). Inducing jet-lag in older people: Directional asymmetry. Journal of Sleep Research, 9(2), 101–116.

what would be late afternoon Burgess, H. J., Crowley, S. J., Gazda, C. J., Fogg, L. F., & Eastman, C. I. (2003). Preflight adjustment to eastward travel: 3 days of advancing sleep with and without morning bright light. Journal of Biological Rhythms, 18(4), 318–328.

before bedtime can be effective Suhner, A., Schlagenhauf, P., Johnson, R., Tschopp, A., & Steffen, R. (1998). Comparative study to determine the optimal melatonin dosage form for the alleviation of jet lag. Chronobiology International, 15(6), 655–666.

and, Waterhouse, J., Reilly, T., Atkinson, G., & Edwards, B. (2007). Jet lag: Trends and coping strategies. Lancet, 369(9567), 1117–1129.

young people and pregnant women have been advised Sanders, D., Chatuvedi, A., & Hordinsky, J. (1999). Melatonin: Aeromedical, toxicopharmacological, and analytical aspects. Journal of Applied Toxicology, 23(3), 159–167.

produced as much melatonin as it can use Eastman, C. I., & Burgess, H. J. (2009). How to travel the world without jet lag. Sleep Medicine Clinics, 4(2), 241–255.

When We Procrastinate Much of this section follows the order of presentation and ideas found in Steel, P., & Ferrari, J. (2013). Sex, education and procrastination: An epidemiological study of procrastinators’ characteristics from a global sample. European Journal of Personality, 27(1), 51–58.

very little patience, and he was easily bored Eberts, J., personal communication. May 5, 2008, Magog, QC.

Jake adopted a strict policy of “do it now.” Eberts, A., personal communication. November 26, 2013, Montreal, QC.

Jake called it eating the frog Eberts, A., personal communication. November 26, 2013, Montreal, QC.

“Eat a live frog” comes from a quote attributed to Mark Twain, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

decision that would help us to reach our goals Orellana-Damacela, L. E., Tindale, R. S., & Suárez-Balcázar, Y. (2000). Decisional and behavioral procrastination: How they relate to self-discrepancies. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 15(5), 225–238.

so bad that treatment is no longer an option Harlan, L. C., Bernstein, A. B., & Kessler, L. G. (1991). Cervical cancer screening: Who is not screened and why? American Journal of Public Health, 81(7), 885–890.

and, Jaberi, F. M., Parvizi, J., Haytmanek, C. T., Joshi, A., & Purtill, J. (2008). Procrastination of wound drainage and malnutrition affect the outcome of joint arthroplasty. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 466(6), 1368–1371.

and, Saposnik, G. (2009). Acute stroke management: Avoiding procrastination, the best way to optimize care delivery. European Journal of Neurology, 16(12), 1251–1252.

and, Steel, P., & Ferrari, J. (2013). Sex, education and procrastination: An epidemiological study of procrastinators’ characteristics from a global sample. European Journal of Personality, 27(1), 51–58.

and, Worthley, D. L., Cole, S. R., Esterman, A., Mehaffey, S., Roosa, N. M., Smith, A., . . . Young, G. P. (2006). Screening for colorectal cancer by faecal occult blood test: Why people choose to refuse. Internal Medicine Journal, 36(9), 607–610.

retirement savings plan until it’s too late Byrne, A., Blake, D., Cairns, A., & Dowd, K. (2006). There’s no time like the present: The cost of delaying retirement saving. Financial Services Review, 15(3), 213–231.

and, Venti, S. (2006). Choice, behavior and retirement saving. In G. Clark, A. Munnell & M. Orszag (Eds.), Oxford handbook of pensions and retirement income (Vol. 1, pp. 21—30). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

graduate from college than men Goldin, C., Katz, L. F., & Kuziemko, I. (2006). The homecoming of American college women: The reversal of the college gender gap. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(4), 133–156.

and, Heckman, J. J., & LaFontaine, P. A. (2010). The American high school graduation rate: Trends and levels. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(2), 244–262.

and, Janosz, M., Archambault, I., Morizot, J., & Pagani, L. S. (2008). School engagement trajectories and their differential predictive relations to dropout. Journal of Social Issues, 64(1), 21–40.

they are less likely to procrastinate The correlations are extremely low and reach statistical significance because of the enormous n in these studies. The strongest of these correlations accounts for only 1% of the variance in procrastination behavior.

shown to reduce the tendency to procrastinate Kaplan, S., & Berman, M. G. (2010). Directed attention as a common resource for executive functioning and self-regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(1), 43–57.

but also with procrastination Rentfrow, P., Gosling, S., & Potter, J. (2008). A theory of the emergence, persistence, and expression of geographic variation in psychological characteristics. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 339–369.

damage to this region of the brain Freeman, W., & Watts, J. W. (1939). An interpretation of the functions of the frontal lobe: Based upon observations in forty-eight cases of prefrontal lobotomy. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 11(5), 527–539, p. 537.

and, Strub, R. L. (1989). Frontal lobe syndrome in a patient with bilateral globus pallidus lesions. Archives of Neurology, 46(9), 1024–1027.

underlying factors lead us to procrastinate Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65.

and, Steel, P. (2010). The procrastination equation: How to stop putting things off and start getting stuff done. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

leads to an increase in procrastination Steel constructs his equation as the inverse of the one I describe here, putting self-confidence and completion value in the numerator, with time-to-completion and distractibility in the denominator. This yields the desirability quotient for the task, which is inversely related to the likelihood of procrastination, that is:

and it follows then that

likelihood of procrastination = 1/desirability.

With apologies to Steel, I’ve eliminated the extra step of flipping the proportion, for clarity of expression.

feedback for completion of the task This is based on equation 1 from, Steel, P., & König, C. J. (2006). Integrating theories of motivation. Academy of Management Review, 31(4), 889–913. Delay is more commonly expressed as T-t, the difference between the value of a reward now at time T, versus the value of that same reward later at time t.

deficits, an inability to get started Rabin, L. A., Fogel, J., & Nutter-Upham, K. E. (2011). Academic procrastination in college students: The role of self-reported executive function. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 33(3), 344–357.

difficulties arise from a lack of planning This is nearly a direct quote from Rabin, L. A., Fogel, J., & Nutter-Upham, K. E. (2011). Academic procrastination in college students: The role of self-reported executive function. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 33(3), 344–357.

reducing this form of procrastination Schouwenburg, H. C., & Lay, C. H. (1995). Trait procrastination and the Big Five factors of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 18(4), 481–490.

most of us would consider to be, well, failures Plimpton, G. (1995). The X factor: A quest for excellence. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the orbital cortex Beer, J. S., John, O. P., Scabini, D., & Knight, R. T. (2006). Orbitofrontal cortex and social behavior: Integrating self-monitoring and emotion-cognition interactions. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(6), 871–879.

and, Luu, P., Collins, P., & Tucker, D. M. (2000). Mood, personality, and self-monitoring: Negative affect and emotionality in relation to frontal lobe mechanisms of error monitoring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(1), 43–60, p. 43.

and, Passingham, R. E., Bengtsson, S. L., & Lau, H. C. (2010). Medial frontal cortex: From self-generated action to reflection on one’s own performance. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(1), 16–21.

self-assessment that their ideas are not good enough Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fMRI study of jazz improvisation. PLoS One, 3(2), e1679.

embarrassment or frustration This is a direct quote from Freeman, W., & Watts, J. W. (1939). An interpretation of the functions of the frontal lobe: Based upon observations in forty-eight cases of prefrontal lobotomy. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 11(5), 527–539, p. 527.

high-profile failures as successes Rolling Stone. (n.d.). The many business failures of Donald Trump. Retrieved from http://www.rollingstone.com

Trump Mortgage, four bankruptcies Donald Trump’s companies filed for bankruptcy 4 times [Video file]. (2011, April 21). ABC News. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-filed-bankruptcy-times/story?id=13419250

full-scale psychological disorders Ronningstam, E. F. (2005). Identifying and understanding the narcissistic personality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

What word can be joined to all Jung-Beeman, M., Bowden, E. M., Haberman, J., Frymiare, J. L., Arambel-Liu, S., Greenblatt, R., . . . Kounios, J. (2004). Neural activity when people solve verbal problems with insight. PLoS Biology, 2(4), e97.

The answer is The word that unites these three is apple.

“I need you to tell me that my life was worthwhile.” Friend, R., Lerner, G., & Foster, D. (Writers). (2012). House: Holding on, Season 8, Episode 22.

less precise, they are better connected Jung-Beeman, M. (2008). Quoted in J. Lehrer (2008, July 28). The eureka hunt. The New Yorker, 40–45.

accompanied by a burst of gamma waves Fleck, J. I., Green, D. L., Stevenson, J. L., Payne, L., Bowden, E. M., Jung-Beeman, M., & Kounios, J. (2008). The transliminal brain at rest: Baseline EEG, unusual experiences, and access to unconscious mental activity. Cortex, 44(10), 1353–1363.

insights happen during warm showers The relaxation phase is crucial. That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers. This is from Jung-Beeman, M. (2008). Quoted in Lehrer J. (2008, July 28). The eureka hunt. The New Yorker, 40–45.

amygdala, the brain’s fear center Bengtsson, S. L., Csíkszentmihályi, M., & Ullén, F. (2007). Cortical regions involved in the generation of musical structures during improvisation in pianists. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(5), 830–842.

and, Ulrich, M., Keller, J., Hoenig, K., Waller, C., & Grön, G. (2014). Neural correlates of experimentally induced flow experiences. NeuroImage, 86, 194–202.

the largest scales of the universe In this section, I am paraphrasing and borrowing liberally from conversations with Csikszentmihalyi, and from our talks and public conversations at a symposium we both appeared at, hosted by the Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, March 6, 2007.

“It didn’t feel like I was writing it. . . .” Omaha, N. E., personal communication. September 15, 2010, and January, 1991. Parts of the latter conversation were published in Levitin, D. J. (1991). Rosanne Cash. Recording-Engineering-Production, 22(2), 18–19.

“I opened my mouth to sing and . . .” Huxley, P., personal communication. May 25, 2013, Washington, DC.

they are modulated in . . . the striatum Seamans, J. K., & Yang, C. R. (2004). The principal features and mechanisms of dopamine modulation in the prefrontal cortex. Progress in Neurobiology, 74(1), 1–58.

and, Ullén, F., de Manzano, Ö., Almeida, R., Magnusson, P. K. E., Pedersen, N. L., Nakamura, J., . . . Madison, G. (2012). Proneness for psychological flow in everyday life: Associations with personality and intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 52(2), 167–172.

freedom to access stream-of-consciousness Boulougouris, V., & Tsaltas, E. (2008). Serotonergic and dopaminergic modulation of attentional processes. Progress in Brain Research, 172, 517–542.

this thinking disrupted the automatic application Dietrich, A. (2004). Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of flow. Consciousness and Cognition, 13(4), 746–761.

it’s the price to pay for being creative Young, N., personal communication. June, 1981, and April, 1984, Woodside, CA.

the world to nourish his creativity Wonder, S., personal communication. April, 1995, Burbank, CA. Parts of this conversation were published in Levitin, D. J. (1996). Conversation in the key of life: Stevie Wonder. Grammy Magazine, 14(3), 14–25.

others to give him maximum freedom Sting, personal communication. September 27, 2007, Barcelona, Spain.

Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing Perry, J. (2012). The art of procrastination: A guide to effective dawdling, lollygagging and postponing. New York, NY: Workman Publishing Company.

scientific articles when an article was due Tierney, J. (2013, January 15). This was supposed to be my column for New Year’s Day. The New York Times, p. D3.

Fish are seduced by is nearly a direct quote from Kubey, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002, February). Television addiction is no mere metaphor. Scientific American, 48–55.

prefrontal cortex’s central executive Grafman, J. (1989). Plans, actions and mental sets: Managerial knowledge units in the frontal lobes. In E. Perecman (Ed.), Integrating Theory and Practice in Clinical Neuropsychology (pp. 93–138). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

what’s the latest and loudest in your head The Freelancers’ Show (Producer). (2013, August 8). The Freelancers’ Show 073—Book club: Getting things done with David Allen [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.freelancersshow.com/the-freelancers-show-073-book-club-getting-things-done-with-david-allen/

chronic diseases and premature death Warburton, D. E., Nicol, C. W., & Bredin, S. S. (2006). Health benefits of physical activity: The evidence. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 174(6), 801–809.

fend off certain types of cancer Friedenreich, C. M. (2001). Physical activity and cancer prevention from observational to intervention research. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, 10(4), 287–301.

and, Friedenreich, C. M., & Orenstein, M. R. (2002). Physical activity and cancer prevention: Etiologic evidence and biological mechanisms. The Journal of Nutrition, 132(11), 3456S–3464S.

five days a week, will yield significant effects Bassuk, S. S., Church, T. S., & Manson, J. E. (2013, August). Why exercise works magic. Scientific American, 74–79.

and, World Health Organization. (n.d.). Global recommendations on physical activity for health. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_recommendations/en/

and, Erickson, K. I., Voss, M. W., Prakash, R. S., Basak, C., Szabo, A., Chaddock, L., . . . Kramer, A. F. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 3017–3022.

decline by increasing blood flow to the brain Pereira A. C., Huddleston, D. E., Brickman, A. M., Sosunov, A. A., Hen, R., McKhann, G. M., . . . Small, S. M. (2007). An in vivo correlate of exercise-induced neurogenesis in the adult dentate gyrus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(13), 5638–5643.

increases in the size of the prefrontal cortex Colcombe, S. J., Erickson, K. I., Scalf, P. E., Kim, J. S., Prakash, R., McAuley, E., . . . Kramer, A. F. (2006). Aerobic exercise training increases brain volume in aging humans. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 61(11), 1166–1170.

and, Hillman, C. H., Erickson, K. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2008). Be smart, exercise your heart: Exercise effects on brain and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(1), 58–65.

memory, and critical thinking Colcombe S. J., Kramer, A. F., Erickson, K. I., Scalf, P., McAuley, E. Cohen, N. J., . . . Elavsky, S. (2004). Cardiovascular fitness, cortical plasticity, and aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(9), 3316–3321.

“. . . only worth ten minutes of my time.” Lavin, D., personal communication. October 23, 2012.

president of a $20 billion Fortune 100 company This figure is in constant dollars; the company’s revenues were $10 billion in 1988, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is equivalent to $20 billion in 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Databases, tables & calculators by subject, CPI inflation calculator. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

and his To Do list Linda, personal communication. November 16, 2009.

than when they were younger Fraisse, P. (1963). The psychology of time. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

and, Walker, J. L. (1977). Time estimation and total subjective time. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 44(2), 527–532.

ten-year-old than for a forty-year-old Walker, J. L. (1977). Time estimation and total subjective time. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 44(2), 527-532.

The formula is S = (A₁/A₂)^1/2 where S equals the subjective duration, and A equals the age of the person in question.

the actual speed of neural transmission slows Block, R. A., Zakay, D., & Hancock, P. A. (1998). Human aging and duration judgments: A meta-analytic review. Psychology and Aging, 13(4), 584–596, p. 584.

and, McAuley, J. D., Jones, M. R., Holub, S., Johnston, H. M., & Miller, N. S. (2006). The time of our lives: Life span development of timing and event tracking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135(3), 348.

such as spending time with family and friends The two sentences that begin with When time is perceived as open-ended . . . are taken nearly verbatim from: Carstensen, L. L. (2006). The influence of a sense of time on human development. Science, 312(5782), 1913–1915.

to view the world more like old people Carstensen, L. L., & Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). Influence of HIV status and age on cognitive representations of others. Health Psychology, 17(6), 494–503, p. 494.

and, Fung, H. H., & Carstensen, L. L. (2006). Goals change when life’s fragility is primed: Lessons learned from older adults, the September 11 attacks and SARS. Social Cognition, 24(3), 248–278.

crêpes suzette or cassoulet de canard Wansink, B., Kniffin, K. M., & Shimizu, M. (2012). Death row nutrition: Curious conclusions of last meals. Appetite, 59(3), 837–843.

while younger adults show the opposite Mather, M., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(10), 496–502.

positivity bias is reflected in brain scans Carstensen, L. L. (2006). The influence of a sense of time on human development. Science, 312(5782), 1913–1915.

mental activity protects against Alzheimer’s Furst, A. J., Rabinovici, G. D., Rostomian, A. H., Steed, T., Alkalay, A., Racine, C., . . . Jagust, W. J. (2012). Cognition, glucose metabolism and amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s disease. Neurobiology of Aging, 33(2), 215–225.

and, Jagust, W. J., & Mormino, E. C. (2011). Lifespan brain activity, β-amyloid, and Alzheimer’s disease. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(11), 520–526.

“. . . is probably more important.” “It has to do with lifelong patterns of behavior,” says William Jagust, a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley. “We tend to focus on what people do at seventy-five in terms of dementia. But there is more evidence that what you do in your life, at forty or fifty, is probably more important.”

Quoted in Grady, D. (2012, March 8). Exercising an aging brain. The New York Times, p. F6.

life span is protective against Alzheimer’s Seeman, T. E., Miller-Martinez, D. M., Merkin, S. S., Lachman, M. E., Tun, P. A., & Karlamangla, A. S. (2011). Histories of social engagement and adult cognition: Midlife in the US study. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 66(Suppl. 1), i141–i152.

creativity combined with a measure of luck Campbell, D. T. (1960). Blind variation and selective retentions in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychological Review, 67(6), 380–400, p. 380.

CHAPTER 6

“Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable” Lewis, M. (2012, September 5). Barack Obama to Michael Lewis on a presidential loss of freedom: “You don’t get used to it—at least, I don’t.” Vanity Fair.

“I’m the one who has to choose . . .” Wynn, S., personal communication. August 1, 2010.

uncertainty about the best treatment Gerstein, L. (M.D.), personal communication. April 9, 2013.

probability of a baby being born a boy The precise ratio of boys to girls is not as simple a question as it may seem. We need to specify whether we are interested only in live births; whether we’re looking at hospital births only or all births; whether or not we’re counting twins. Variations have been observed depending on these factors as well as the race of the parents, the country being considered, and many others. The ratio comes out to being very close to 50-50 but not exactly.

90% chance For the sake of completeness, there are rare cases where a statement like “There is a 90 percent chance I’m going to Susan’s party” is actually based on a calculation. Say, for example, that my car is in the shop and it needs either a new fuel injector or a valve-and-ring overhaul. If it’s just a fuel injector, they can have it ready for me by Friday—in time for me to take it to the party—but if it requires the overhaul, they need an extra week to pull the engine and get it to a machine shop. Now, my mechanic may have access to data from the automobile manufacturer that says that there is a 90% probability of fuel injector failure for cars with my mileage, and a 10% probability of needing the valve-and-ring overhaul. Here, my statement about attending Susan’s party—normally an estimate of confidence, not a strict probability—is tied to an actual probability calculation, that of needing a new fuel injector. If I wanted to be completely accurate about the party, I’d say, “I’m hoping to go, but according to the mechanic, there’s a 10 percent chance my car won’t be ready, and then I won’t go.” This is cumbersome, but it makes clear that my probability statement is not an estimate, but rather, is tied to a calculated event.

“There is a ten percent probability that a rogue nation . . .” I’m being particularly optimistic with this 10% estimate. In 2006, Robert Gallucci, dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, estimated that “it is more likely than not that al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates will detonate a nuclear weapon in a U.S. city within the next five to ten years.” The phrase “more likely than not” obviously means a greater than 50% chance. Quoted in Kittrie, O. F. (2007). Averting catastrophe: Why the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is losing its deterrence capacity and how to restore it. Michigan Journal of International Law, 28, 337–430, p. 342.

the chance is 1 in 10,000 National Weather Service. (n.d.). How dangerous is lightning? Retrieved from http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov

hit by lightning twice (n.a.). (2011, May 2). How lucky can you get! Incredible story of how man survives being hit by lightning TWICE in remarkable CCTV footage. Daily Mail.

and, Campbell, K. (2000). Guinness World Records 2001. New York, NY: Guinness World Records Ltd., p. 36.

Blank Airways just had their crash I wrote this independently and then discovered that it closely mirrors a passage in the book by Hacking that I encountered only later. Hacking, I. (2001). An introduction to probability and inductive logic. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, p. 31.

each of which is equally likely This is one of those cases where intuition—our gut—is engaging in faulty reasoning. The probability of getting ten heads in a row followed by one tail is exactly the same as the probability of getting ten heads in a row followed by one more head. Both sequences are extremely unlikely, but when you’ve already gotten those ten heads in a row, that eleventh outcome is still 50-50, and the toss can still go either way. Tails are not due. They don’t need to appear in order to balance out the sequence.

no one put down runs of seven heads or tails in a row Hacking, I. (2001). An introduction to probability and inductive logic. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, p. 31.

14 flips are required to get three heads in a row Ginsparg, P. (2005). How many coin flips on average does it take to get n consecutive heads? Retrieved from https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/INFO295/mh.pdf

in 100 flips, there’s a greater than 99.9% chance The probability of getting at least one run that’s three heads or longer in N flips is

 

1−(1.236839844 / 1.087378025^(N+1))

Which for 100 flips is about 0.9997382.

Weisstein, E. W. (n.d.). Run. Retrieved from http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Run.html

 

(all that is left are aces) Mosteller, F., Rourke, R. E. K., & Thomas, G. B. (1961). Probability and statistics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, p. 17.

don’t ignore the base rate Gerstein, L. (M.D.), personal communication. April 9, 2013.

850,000 doctors in the United States Young, A., Chaudhry, H. J., Rhyne, J., & Dugan, M. (2011). A census of actively licensed physicians in the United States, 2010. Journal of Medical Regulation, 96(4), 10–20.

only fifteen cabinet members The White House. (n.d.). The cabinet. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/cabinet

There are sixteen cabinet members, counting the vice president.

sixteen members of the 111th Congress were doctors Manning, J. E. (2010). Membership of the 111th Congress: A Profile. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Publication https://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid=%260BL%29PL%3B%3D%0A_7-5700

fourfold tables (also known as contingency tables) Bishop, Y. M., Fienberg, S. E., & Holland, P. W. (1975). Discrete multivariate analysis: Theory and practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

and, Wickens, T. D. (1989). Multiway contingency tables analysis for the social sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

a medication called chlorohydroxelene I made this up. There is no medication called chlorohydroxelene. Any similarity between medications living or dead is coincidence.

Unfortunately, these numbers are typical The meds we’re talking about here are for blurritis—I didn’t mention anything about meds for the itchy back. In fact, there is a real condition in which you have an itch on your back just where you can’t reach it—notalgia paresthetica—and it has no cure.

assume a population of 120 You can choose any number you like here. I chose 120 because I knew it had to be divisible by 6 to retain whole numbers in the example. Whole numbers aren’t necessary—you could start with a population of 100 and you’d end up with decimal places in the table, which is fine.

green disease and 20 must have This is solved with high school algebra. There is some number x that represents the number of people with the less common disease (the blue disease): 5x represents the more common disease (the green disease); x + 5x has to equal the 120 that we designated would be our population for the purposes of this table. We set up the equation x + 5x = 120. Adding the two terms on the left gives us 6x = 120. Dividing both sides of the equation by 6, to isolate the single x, gives us x = 20. Therefore, the number of people with the blue disease equals 20.

come out ahead in the long run by paying parking tickets My publisher told me I had to put in the following note: “I am not counseling anyone to break the law by parking illegally; I’m using this only to make a hypothetical point.”

$650 on parking tickets versus $1,040 We can add different outcomes for a total expected value. Suppose there is an urn full of paper money—$1, $5, and $20 bills. You’re allowed to reach in and take one and you keep whatever you get. There are 65 $1 bills, 25 $5 bills and 10 $20 bills. What is the expected value of the game? Because the total number of bills adds up to 100 (65 + 25 + 10), it’s easy to convert these into probabilities: There’s a .65 chance of getting $1, a .25 chance of getting $5, and a .1 chance of getting $20. We multiply each probability by its payoff, and add them together:

The expected value is therefore $3.90. Note that you can never actually get this exact amount of money. But this is the average amount you should expect to receive, and it helps to calculate how much you’d be willing to pay to play this game. The probabilities change slightly as the bills are sequentially drawn because fewer remain in the urn and you know which ones you’ve drawn already.

When you go to a carnival and pay to throw baseballs at milk bottles, or rings onto cones, you might be lured by the giant stuffed animals and other attractive prizes. The cost of playing the game is usually only a fraction of the value of the prize. But carnivals are in the business of making money and they’ve worked things out to favor “the house,” the carnival or concession owner. The expected value of these games is always lower than the cost of playing it. Although a few people come out ahead, winning prizes that are greater in value than what they spend to play, in the long run the carnival makes a lot of money.

Casinos work the same way.

your doctor is ill-equipped to walk through the statistics I know this from having taught medical students for many years. In addition, most medical students fail to evaluate information sources as they are “ill equipped and unwilling” according to Thompson, N., Lewis, S., Brennan, P., & Robinson, J. (2010). Information literacy: Are final-year medical radiation science students on the pathway to success? Journal of Allied Health, 39(3), e83–e89. To be fair, medical training is so unbelievably detailed and intense, most students have little time for anything outside the prescribed curriculum—there is just an enormous amount to absorb in a relatively short time.

“Doctors generate better knowledge of efficacy . . .” Jones, D. S. (2012). Broken hearts: The tangled history of cardiac care. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

500,000 performed in the United States every year University of Michigan Health System. (2013). Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Retrieved from http://www.med.umich.edu/cardiac-surgery/patient/adult/adultcandt/cabg.shtml

no survival benefit in most patients Murphy, M. L., Hultgren, H. N., Detre, K., Thomsen, J., & Takaro, T. (1977). Treatment of chronic stable angina: A preliminary report of survival data of the randomized Veterans Administration Cooperative Study. New England Journal of Medicine, 297(12), 621–627.

. . . they come to believe that it does work . . . Jones, D. S. (2012). Broken hearts: The tangled history of cardiac care. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Angioplasty went from zero to 100,000 procedures a year Park, A. (2013, March–April). A cardiac conundrum: How gaps in medical knowledge affect matters of the heart. Harvard Magazine, 25–29.

clinical trials show no survival benefit Ellis, S. G., Mooney, M. R., George, B. S., Da Silva, E. E., Talley, J. D., Flanagan, W. H., & Topol, E. J. (1992). Randomized trial of late elective angioplasty versus conservative management for patients with residual stenoses after thrombolytic treatment of myocardial infarction. Treatment of Post-Thrombolytic Stenoses (TOPS) Study Group. Circulation, 86(5), 1400–1406.

and, Hueb, W., Lopes, N. H., Gersh, B. J., Soares, P., Machado, L. A., Jatene, F. B., . . . Ramires, J. A. (2007). Five-year follow-up of the Medicine, Angioplasty, or Surgery Study (MASS II): A randomized controlled clinical trial of 3 therapeutic strategies for multivessel coronary artery disease. Circulation, 115(9), 1082–1089.

and, Michels, K. B., & Yusuf, S. (1995). Does PTCA in acute myocardial infarction affect mortality and reinfarction rates? A quantitative overview (meta-analysis) of the randomized clinical trials. Circulation, 91(2), 476–485.

extend life expectancy by even one day Jones, D. S. (2012). Broken hearts: The tangled history of cardiac care. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

People given a choice Engelmann, J. B., Capra, C. M., Noussair, C., & Berns, G. S. (2009). Expert financial advice neurobiologically “offloads” financial decision-making under risk. PLoS One, 4(3), e4957.

hand over their decision to the expert Hertz, N. (2013, October 20). Why we make bad decisions. The New York Times, p. SR6.

prostate cancer treatments I am borrowing liberally here from a piece I previously published. Levitin, D. J. (2011, October 9). Heal thyself. [Review of the book Your medical mind: How to decide what is right for you by J. Groopman & P. Hartzband]. The New York Times Sunday Book Review, p. BR28.

2.5 million men Howlader, N., Noone, A. M., Krapcho, M., Neyman, N., Aminou, R., Waldron, W., . . . Cronin, K. A. (Eds.). SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975–2009 (Vintage 2009 Populations). Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute, based on November 2011 SEER data submission. Retrieved from http://seer.cancer.gov/archive/csr/1975_2009_pops09/

3% of men will die American Cancer Society. (2013). What are the key statistics about prostate cancer? Retrieved from http://www.cancer.org

radical surgery to remove the prostate National Cancer Institute. (2013). Prostate cancer treatment (PDQ®): Treatment option overview. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.gov

and, Scholz, M., & Blum, R. (2010). Invasion of the prostate snatchers: No more unnecessary biopsies, radical treatment or loss of sexual potency. New York, NY: Other Press, pp. 20–21.

most men die with it Groopman, J., & Hartzband, P. (2011). Your medical mind: How to decide what is right for you. New York, NY: Penguin, pp. 246–247.

and, Hessels, D., Verhaegh, G. W., Schalken, J. A., & Witjes, J. A. (2004). Applicability of biomarkers in the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, 4(4), 513–526.

what about the side effects? Hugosson, J., Stranne, J., & Carlsson, S. V. (2011). Radical retropubic prostatectomy: A review of outcomes and side-effects. Acta Oncologica, 50(Suppl. 1), 92–97.

and, National Cancer Institute. (2014). Stage I prostate cancer treatment. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.gov

and, Prostate Doctor. (2011, June 4). Shortening of the penis after prostatectomy: Yes, it really happens [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://myprostatedoc.blogspot.com

and, Talcott, J. A., Rieker, P., Clark, J. A., Propert, K. J., Weeks, J. C., Beard, C. J., . . . Kantoff, P. W. (1998). Patient-reported symptoms after primary therapy for early prostate cancer: Results of a prospective cohort study. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 16(1), 275–283, p. 275.

and, Wilt, T. J., MacDonald R., Rutks, I., Shamliyan, T. A., Taylor, B. C., & Kane, R. L. (2008). Systematic review: Comparative effectiveness and harms of treatments for clinically localized prostate cancer. Annals of Internal Medicine, 148(6), 435–448.

Forty-seven out of 48 Schröder, F. H., Hugosson, J., Roobol, M. J., Tammela, T., Ciatto, S., Nelen, V., . . . Auvinen, A. (2009). Screening and prostate cancer mortality in a randomized European study. New England Journal of Medicine, 360(13), 1320–1328.

24 times more likely to be harmed Kao, T. C., Cruess, D. F., Garner, D., Foley, J., Seay, T., Friedrichs, P., . . . Moul, J. W. (2000). Multicenter patient self-reporting questionnaire on impotence, incontinence and stricture after radical prostatectomy. The Journal of Urology, 163(3), 858–864.

and, Bates, T. S., Wright, M. P., & Gillatt, D.A. (1998). Prevalence and impact of incontinence and impotence following total prostatectomy assessed anonymously by the ICS-Male Questionnaire. European Urology 33(2), 165-169.

20% regret their decision Parker-Pope, T. (2008, August 27). Regrets after prostate surgery. The New York Times.

“It’s very hard to tell a surgeon . . .” This quote comes from Pollock, A. (2013, May 8). New test improves assessment of prostate cancer risk, study says. The New York Times, p. B3.

“Surgeons are taught . . .” Kenet, B., personal communication. January 30, 2014, New York, NY.

extend your life by one hour for every hour you exercise Science Daily Health Behavior News Service. (2012). Exercise can extend your life by as much as five years. Retrieved from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121211082810.htm

doesn’t match a single person Consider a statistic for the average number of hours per week that people spend watching television. In a small apartment building, maybe 4 people watch 1 hour a week, and 1 person watches 10 hours a week. To compute the average, we total the number of hours per week (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 10 = 14) and divide by the number of people (14/5) to get 2.8. No one in the apartment building watches 2.8 hours per week in this case, but it is the average.

I’m using the term average here interchangeably with the statistical concept of the “mean.”

There are two other measures of central tendency, the median and the mode, and these are also called averages. The median is the midway point, the number at which half the observations are above and half are below. If we looked at weekly incomes in that same apartment building, and they were $500, $500, $600, $700, $800, the median is $600: Half the values are above and half are below. (By convention, when you have a bunch of ties as in the number of hours per week of TV watching, you still count up to the halfway point in the list and that number becomes the median; in the TV example, the median is 1). The other measure that is also called an average is the “mode,” the value that occurs most often. In the hours per week of TV example, the mode is 1. In the weekly income, it is $500. Note that the mean, median, and mode can be different. They serve different functions. For examples of when each is useful, see Wheelan, C. (2013). Naked statistics: Stripping the dread from the data. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

erectile dysfunction Tuncel, A., Kirilmaz, U., Nalcacioglu, V., Aslan, Y., Polat, F., & Atan, A. (2008). The impact of transrectal prostate needle biopsy on sexuality in men and their female partners. Urology, 71(6), 1128–1131.

“. . . medical statistics are different from other statistics.” I hope that you, dear reader, will believe me when I say that medical statistics are not different from other statistics. The numbers in an equation don’t know whether they’re being used to describe cancer or faulty fuel injectors. I wish this one surgeon’s reaction were an anomaly, but unfortunately, I’ve heard dozens of variations of this. I’m immensely grateful that surgeons are much better at surgery than they are at decision-making, but this just means all of us have to be more vigilant at the front end, deciding whether surgery is the best option in any given situation.

both an art and a science Edwards, A., Elwyn, G., & Mulley, A. (2002). Explaining risks: Turning numerical data into meaningful pictures. BMJ, 324(7341), 827–830.

Diphtheria fell from 175,000 cases National Immunization Program, CDC. (1999). Achievements in public health, 1900–1999 impact of vaccines universally recommended for children—United States, 1990–1998. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 48(12), 243–248. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm#00003753.htm

World life expectancy since then has increased Global life expectancy 10, 000 BCE–2003. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://cdn.singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/life-expectancy-hockey-stick.png

U.S. life expectancy National Institutes of Health. (n.d.). U.S. life expectancy. Retrieved from http://www.nih.gov/about/impact/life_expectancy_graph.htm

Infant, neonatal, and postneonatal mortality Maternal and Child Health Bureau. (2013). Infant mortality. Retrieved from http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa13/perinatal-health-status-indicators/p/infant-mortality.html

rates for childhood leukemia Simone, J. V. (2003). Childhood leukemia—successes and challenges for survivors. New England Journal of Medicine, 349(7), 627–628.

$60 billion business Think yourself better. The Economist. (2011, May 19). The New York Times estimates it as a $32 billion business in the US.

and, O’Connor, A. (2013, December 21). Spike in harm to liver is tied to dietary aids. The New York Times, p. A1.

Forty percent of Americans Mayo Clinic Staff. (2011, October 20). Complementary and alternative medicine. Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/alternative-medicine/PN00001

it is simply called medicine I thank Ben Goldacre for this formulation.

diluting a substance repeatedly Ernst, E. (2002). A systematic review of systematic reviews of homeopathy. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 54(6), 577–582.

and, Jonas, W. B., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Linde, K. (2003). A critical overview of homeopathy. Annals of Internal Medicine, 138(5), 393–399.

According to homeopaths, the “vibrations” Dancu, D. (1996). Homeopathic vibrations: A guide for natural healing. Longmont, CO: SunShine Press Publications.

and, Kratky, K. W. (2004). Homöopathie und Wasserstruktur: Ein physikalisches Modell [Homeopathy and structure of water: A physical model]. Forschende Komplementärmedizin und Klassische Naturheilkunde [Research in Complementary and Classical Natural Medicine], 11(1), 24–32.

and, Vithoulkas, G. (1980). The science of homeopathy. New York, NY: Grove Press.

a very specific procedure Goldacre, B. (2011, February 19). In case of overdose, consult a lifeguard. The Guardian.

and, Randi, J. [Rational Response Squad]. (2006, November 16). James Randi explains homeopathy [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com

grain of rice in solar system: Assume a grain of rice at 5 × 1.4 × 1.4 mm, or a volume of 9.8 m³. Convert to miles = 2.4 × 10^-18. Take for the size of our solar system the radius from the sun to one end of the Oort cloud, about 50 AUs or 4.65 × 10¹² miles. Volume = 4/3∏r³ = 4.21 × 10³⁸. One grain of rice in a sphere the volume of the solar system would be (2.4 × 10^-18) / (4.21 × 1038) = 5.70 × 10^-57. To achieve a dilution of 1 × 101⁵⁰⁰ requires 1500/57 more dilutions, or 26 more times.

Randi has offered $1 million Solon, O. (2011, February 11). Sceptic offers $1 million for proof that homeopathy works. Wired UK.

equivalent to placebo Think yourself better. The Economist. (2011, May 19).

multivitamins are not effective for anything Ebbing, M., & Vollset, S. E. (2013). Long-term supplementation with multivitamins and minerals did not improve male US physicians’ cardiovascular health or prolong their lives. Evidence-Based Medicine, 18(6), 218–219.

and, Guallar, E., Stranges, S., Mulrow, C., Appel, L. J., & Miller, E. R. (2013). Enough is enough: Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements. Annals of Internal Medicine, 159(12), 850–851.

and, Willig, A. (2014, January 19). Multivitamins are no use? The Guardian.

Excess Vitamin D Rattue, G. (2012, January 9). Can too much vitamin D harm cardiovascular health? Probably. Medical News Today.

excess Vitamin B6 Sheehan, J. (n.d.). Can you take too much vitamin B6 & vitamin B12? Retrieved from http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/can-much-vitamin-b6-vitamin-b12-6060.html

millions of Americans take Vitamin C Marshall, C. W. (n.d.). Vitamin C: Do high doses prevent colds? Retrieved from http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/colds.html

echinacea when they feel a cold Bauer, B. A. (n.d.). Will dietary supplements containing echinacea help me get over a cold faster? Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/echinacea/an01982

“Every parent who has stayed up . . .” Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

2,170 more people died There exist conflicting statistics about this. Deonandan and Backwell (2011) found no difference in fatalities, but an increase in injuries. Blalock, Kadiyali, & Simon (2009) found an increase in fatalities of 982 for the last three months of 2001, but as many as 2,300 over the long term. The 9/11 effect appears to be continuing—hundreds more people die in highway accidents every September than the baseline for traffic accidents, due to fears that terrorists will strike again on or about the 9/11 anniversary (Hampson, 2011).

Gigerenzer (2006) writes: “An estimated 1,500 Americans died on the road in the attempt to avoid the fate of the passengers who were killed in the four fatal flights.”

There is a very nicely argued article by Chapman & Harris (2002) about human failure to properly perceive risk, and to overreact to some forms of death and underreact to others. See also, Kenny (2011), and Sivac & Flannagan (2003).

Blalock, G., Kadiyali, V., & Simon, D. H. (2009). Driving fatalities after 9/11: A hidden cost of terrorism. Applied Economics, 41(14), 1717–1729.

and, Chapman, C. R., & Harris, A. W. (2002). A skeptical look at September 11th. Skeptical Inquirer, 26(5). Retrieved from http://www.csicop.org

and, Deonandan, R., & Backwell, A. (2011). Driving deaths and injuries post-9/11. International Journal of General Medicine, 4, 803–807.

and, Gigerenzer, G. (2006). Out of the frying pan into the fire: Behavioral reactions to terrorist attacks. Risk Analysis, 26(2), 347–351.

and, Hampson, R. (2011, September 5). After 9/11: 50 dates that quietly changed America. USA Today.

and, Kenny, C. (2011, November 18). Airport security is killing us. Business Week.

and, Sivak M., & Flannagan, M. (2003). Flying and driving after the September 11 attacks. American Scientist, 91(1), 6–8.

ten million safe commercial flights Snyder, B. (2012, January 9) An incredibly safe year for air travel. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com

“Terrorists can strike twice . . .” Gaissmaier, W., & Gigerenzer, G. (2012). 9/11, Act II: A fine-grained analysis of regional variations in traffic fatalities in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Psychological Science, 23(12), 1449–1454.

But they probably don’t. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

accurate only 20% of the time Christakis, N. A. (1999). Death foretold: Prophecy and prognosis in medical care. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

wrong for about 40% Berner, E. S., & Graber, M. L., (2008). Overconfidence as a cause of diagnostic error in medicine. American Journal of Medicine, 121(5 Suppl.), S2–S23.

70% of the companies O’Connor, A. (2013, December 21). Spike in harm to liver is tied to dietary aids. The New York Times, p. A1.

Christopher Herrera O’Connor, A. (2013, December 21). Spike in harm to liver is tied to dietary aids. The New York Times, p. A1.

He had suffered liver damage after using a green tea extract This information is taken from O’Connor, A. (2013, December 22). Spike in harm to liver is tied to dietary aids. The New York Times, p. A1.

plural of anecdote is not data Sechrest, L., & Pitz, D. (1987). Commentary: Measuring the effectiveness of heart transplant programmes. Journal of Chronic Diseases, 40(Suppl. 1), 155S–158S.

Steve Jobs . . . rejected surgery Quora. (n.d). Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer? Retrieved from http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/Why-did-Steve-Jobs-choose-not-to-effectively-treat-his-cancer

and, Walton, A. G. (2011, October 24). Steve Jobs’ cancer treatment regrets. Forbes.

(NIH) has set up a division National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://nccam.nih.gov/

people who benefit from alternative therapies See, for example, Garg, S. K., Croft, A. M., & Bager, P. (2014, January 20). Helminth therapy (worms) for induction of remission in inflammatory bowel disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (1), Art. No. CD009400. Retrieved from http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD009400/helminth-therapy-worms-for-induction-of-remission-in-inflammatory-bowel-disease

and, White, A. R., Rampes, H., Liu, J. P., Stead, L. F., & Campbell, J. (2014, January 23). Acupuncture and related interventions for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (1), Art. No. CD000009. Retrieved from http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD000009/do-acupuncture-and-related-therapies-help-smokers-who-are-trying-to-quit

150 people need to be treated with Vitamin D Bjelakovic, G., Gluud, L., Nikolova, D., Whitfield, K., Wetterslev, J., Simonetti, R. G.,  . . . Gluud, C. (2014). Vitamin D supplementation for prevention of mortality in adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (1), Art. No. CD007470. Retrieved from http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007470/vitamin-d-supplementation-for-prevention-of-mortality-in-adults#sthash.Z6rLxTiS.dpuf

excess of Vitamin D to mortality Durup, D., Jørgensen, H. L., Christensen, J., Schwarz, P., Heegaard, A. M., & Lind, B. (2012). A reverse J-shaped association of all-cause mortality with serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in general practice: The CopD study. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 97(8), 2644–2652.

and, Groopman, J., & Hartzband, P. (2011). Your medical mind: How to decide what is right for you. New York, NY: Penguin.

four types of patients I am borrowing liberally here from a piece I previously published. Levitin, D. J. (2011, October 9). Heal thyself. [Review of the book Your medical mind: How to decide what is right for you by J. Groopman & P. Hartzband]. The New York Times Sunday Book Review, p. BR28.

prospect theory and expected utility See, for example, Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–292.

Scenario D changes Amos used to tell an elaborate story about a married man with two children who is taken captive by a rebel group of terrorists who force him to play a modified version of the game Russian roulette, in which various numbers of bullets are loaded into the revolver. The prisoner is allowed to pay his captors to remove one bullet from the gun. The dilemma is that he has to balance how much he values his life against the possibility of leaving his wife and children penniless. (We assume for the sake of the story that the captors are honorable and that they accurately tell him how many bullets are in the gun at the beginning of the game, and that they’ll let him go after he plays the game once.)

 

a. How much would you pay to remove one bullet if there are six bullets in the gun, reducing the risk of dying from 6/6 to 5/6?

b. How much would you pay to remove one bullet if there are four bullets in the gun, reducing the risk of dying from 4/6 to 3/6?

c. How much would you pay to remove one bullet if there is only one bullet in the gun, reducing the risk of dying from 1/6 to 0?

 

Most of us would pay any amount of money in scenario C, to reduce the risk of dying to 0. And we might pay that much money for scenario A as well, showing the possibility effect. Scenario B somehow feels different than the other two. You’re moving from one possibility to another possibility, not from certainty to possibility (scenario A) or from possibility to certainty (scenario C).

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

even ridiculous manipulations Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39(4), 341–350, p. 341.

78 die by the end of five years I’ve simplified these examples to focus on the critical factors. They are taken from Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1986). Rational choice and the framing of decisions. Journal of Business 59(4 pt 2), S251–S278.

better with pictures than with raw numbers Ferrara, F., Pratt, D., & Robutti, O. (2006). The role and uses of technologies for the teaching of algebra and calculus. In A. Gutiérrez & P. Boero (Eds.), Handbook of research on the psychology of mathematics education: Past, present and future (pp. 237–273). Boston, MA: Sense Publishers.

and, Tall, D. (1991). Intuition and rigour: The role of visualization in the calculus. In W. Zimmermann & S. Cunningham (Eds.), Visualization in teaching and learning mathematics: A project (pp. 105–119). Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America.

proportion of people in each category Cates, C. (n.d.). Dr. Chris Cates’ EBM website. Retrieved from http://www.nntonline.net/

I asked a tire specialist about it Crosswhite, R., personal communication. April 29, 2013, American Tire Depot, Sherman Oaks, CA.

See also, Montoya, R. (2011, November 18). How old—and dangerous—are your tires? Retrieved from http://www.edmunds.com

CHAPTER 7

The ensuing government inquiry Government of Quebec, Transports Quebec. (2007). Commission of inquiry into the collapse of a portion of the de la Concorde overpass: Report. Retrieved from http://www.cevc.gouv.qc.ca/UserFiles/File/Rapport/report_eng.pdf

The history of shoddy construction Tranquillus Suetonius, C. (1997). Lives of the twelve Caesars (H. M. Bird, Trans.). Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature.

Up until the mid 1800s, businesses were primarily Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. In this paragraph, I’m borrowing liberally, including close paraphrases of Yates’s excellent discourse on pp. xv–xix.

There are a few exceptions. The Dutch East India Company, often cited as the first multinational company, had been around since 1602, and the Hudson’s Bay Company was founded in 1670 and is still in business today.

Damodaran, A. (2009). The octopus: Valuing multi-business, multi-national companies. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1609795

and, Lubinsky, P., Romero-Gonzalez, G. A., Heredia, S. M., & Zabel, S. (2011). Origins and patterns of vanilla cultivation in tropical America (1500–1900): No support for an independent domestication of vanilla in South America. In D. Havkin-Frenkel & F. Belanger (Eds.), Handbook of vanilla science and technology (p. 117). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

and, Shorto, R. (2013). Amsterdam: A history of the world’s most liberal city. New York, NY: Doubleday.

The need for documentation and functional specialization Parts of this passage are nearly direct quotes from Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 1.

No one was certain who Yates (1989) gives a brief account of this and refers the reader to “Report on the collision of trains, near Chester,” October 16, 1841, Western Railroad Clerk’s File #74; in Western Railroad Collection, Case #1, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

The railroad company investigators In following the advice offered from these crash reports, railroads acknowledged the need for more formal and more structured communication. Managers began by identifying the items of information that were required—such as the speed of a given train, the time it left the station, how many cars it was pulling—in order to maximize efficiency (and thus profits), and minimize the possibility of accidents.

or capacity of any single individual “a continuing attempt to transcend dependence upon the skills, memory, or capacity of any single individual.” This is a direct quote from Yates, p. 10, citing Jelinek, M. (1980). Toward systematic management: Alexander Hamilton Church. Business History Review, 54(01), 63–79. Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

standardized ways of performing these duties “a careful definition of duties and responsibilities coupled with standardized ways of performing these duties.” This is a direct quote from Litterer, J. A. (1963). Systematic management: Design for organizational recoupling in American manufacturing firms. Business History Review, 37(4), 369–391, p. 389.

See also, Litterer, J. A. (1961). Systematic management: The search for order and integration. Business History Review, 35 (4), 461–476.

English efficiency engineer Alexander Hamilton Church Jelinek, M. (1980). Toward systematic management: Alexander Hamilton Church. Business History Review, 54(1), 63–79, p. 69.

and, Litterer, J. A. (1961). Systematic management: The search for order and integration. Business History Review, 35(4), 461–476.

reporting relationships among employees Chandler, Jr., A. D. (1962). Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of the American industrial enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

and, Kaliski, B. S. (2001). Encyclopedia of business and finance. New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 669.

Network diagrams were first introduced Moreno, J. L. (1943). Sociometry and the cultural order. Sociometry 6(3), 299–344.

and, Wasserman, S. (1994). Social network analysis: Methods and applications (Vol. 8). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Compare these two different org charts Whitenton, K. (2013, November 10). Flat vs. deep web hierarchies. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved from http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-vs-deep-hierarchy/

flat structure with decentralized control and communications Dodson, J. R. (2006). Man-hunting, nexus topography, dark networks, and small worlds. IO Sphere, 7–10.

and, Heger, L., Jung, D., & Wong, W. H. (2012). Organizing for resistance: How group structure impacts the character of violence. Terrorism and Political Violence, 24(5), 743–768.

and, Matusitz, J. (2011). Social network theory: A comparative analysis of the Jewish revolt in antiquity and the cyber terrorism incident over Kosovo. Information Security Journal: A Global Perspective, 20(1), 34–44.

coherence across different components of a project Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization. New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 9.

accountable for their decisions and their work product Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization. New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 2.

Fifty companies in the world CNN Money. (n.d.). Top companies: Biggest employers. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/

and, Hess, A. E. M. (2013, August 22). The 10 largest employers in America. USA Today.

Companies can be thought of as transactive Wegner, D. M. (1987). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. In B. Mullen & F. R. Goethals (Eds.), Theories of group behavior (pp. 185–208). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

The vertical structure allows managers This is almost a direct quote from Jones, G. R., Mills, A. J., Weatherbee, T. G., & Mills, J. H. (2006). Organizational theory, design, and change (Canadian ed.). Toronto, Canada: Prentice Hall, p. 150.

Its corporate culture places a high value Jones, G. R., Mills, A. J., Weatherbee, T. G., & Mills, J. H. (2006). Organizational theory, design, and change (Canadian ed.). Toronto, ON: Prentice Hall, p. 144.

When Liz Claiborne was designing Nearly a direct quote from Jones, G. R., Mills, A. J., Weatherbee, T. G., & Mills, J. H. (2006). Organizational theory, design, and change (Canadian ed.). Toronto, ON: Prentice Hall, p. 147.

different structures work best for different companies Andersen, J. A., & Jonsson, P. (2006). Does organization structure matter? On the relationship between the structure, functioning and effectiveness. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 3(03), 237–263.

rather, it increases the number of levels by a factor of 2 Blau, P. M. (1974). On the nature of organizations. American Journal of Sociology, 82(5). 1130–1132.

and, Delmastro, M. (2002). The determinants of the management hierarchy: Evidence from Italian plants. International Journal of Industrial Organization, 20(1), 119–137.

and, Graubner, M. (2006). Task, firm size, and organizational structure in management consulting: An empirical analysis from a contingency perspective (Vol. 63). Frankfurt, Germany: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag.

nine or ten levels in their hierarchy Jones, G. R., Mills, A. J., Weatherbee, T. G., & Mills, J. H. (2006). Organizational theory, design, and change (Canadian ed.). Toronto, Canada: Prentice Hall, p. 146.

number of hierarchical levels possible Hill, C. W. L., & Jones, G. R. (2008). Strategic management: An integrated approach (8th ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

A fire isn’t put out by the fire chief This section borrows liberally from Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 2.

including the insula and amygdala Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science, 300(5626), 1755–1758.

responsible for the fight-or-flight response Basten, U., Biele, G., Heekeren, H. R., & Fiebach, C. J. (2010). How the brain integrates costs and benefits during decision-making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(50), 21767–21772.

we bring to decision-making is partly illusory de Waal, F. B. M. (2008). How selfish an animal? The case of primate cooperation. In P. J. Zak (Ed.), Moral markets: The critical role of values in the economy (pp. 63–76). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 63.

“allowing subordinate and adjacent units . . .” United States Department of the Army. (2011). Unified land operations, ADP3–0. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army.

“. . . upon the province of a subordinate” United States Department of the Army. (1923). Field service regulations United States Army. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, p. 7.

“. . . The trust between all levels depends upon candor. . . .” United States Department of the Army. (2012). The army, ADP 1. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 2.

“. . . and a willingness to learn from mistakes. . . .” United States Department of the Army. (2012). The army, ADP 1. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, pp. 2–4.

“. . . possible while keeping operations synchronized.” United States Department of the Army. (2012). Mission command, ADP 6–0. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 8.

trained, or experienced than the subordinate Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 236.

can use it for making more important decisions Nearly a direct quote from Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 236.

directly available to them and not to the superior Nearly a direct quote from Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan, p. 238.

“. . . knowledge they already have from the field.” McChrystal, S., personal communication. July 18, 2013.

“. . . decision themselves and be comfortable with it.” Wynn, S., personal communication. May 5, 2012, Las Vegas, NV.

“. . . do what he thought needed to be done.” Bloomberg, M., personal communication. July 20, 2013.

wired into our brains, a product of evolution Mikhail, J. (2007). Universal moral grammar: Theory, evidence and the future. Trends in Cognitive Science, 11(4), 143–152.

and, Petrinovich, L., O’Neill, P., & Jorgensen, M. (1993). An empirical study of moral intuitions: Toward an evolutionary ethics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 467–478, p. 467.

and, Wright, R. (1995). The moral animal: Why we are, the way we are: The new science of evolutionary psychology (First Vintage Books ed.). New York, NY: Random House Vintage Books.

Even three-year-olds react to inequality LoBue, V., Nishida, T., Chiong, C., DeLoache, J. S., & Haidt, J. (2011). When getting something good is bad: Even three-year-olds react to inequality. Social Development, 20(1), 154–170.

“. . . return from a campaign not only as good Soldiers . . .” United States Department of the Army. (2012). The army, ADP 1. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, pp. 2-7.

“. . . effective and ethical application of combat power.” United States Department of the Army. (2012). The army, ADP 1. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, pp. 2-5.

Making ethical or moral decisions Salvador, R., & Folger, R. G. (2009). Business ethics and the brain. Business Ethics Quarterly, 19(1), 1–31.

These two regions are also required Harlow, J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39(20), 389–393.

and, Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Eslinger, P. J., Bramati, I. E., Mourão-Miranda, J., Andreiulo, P. A., & Pessoa, L. (2002). The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions. The Journal of Neuroscience, 22(7), 2730–2736.

and, Spitzer, M., Fischbacher, U., Herrnberger, B., Grön, G., & Fehr, E. (2007). The neural signature of social norm compliance. Neuron, 56(1), 185–196.

When damaged, they can lead to socially inappropriate Salvador, R., & Folger, R. G. (2009). Business ethics and the brain. Business Ethics Quarterly, 19(1), 1–31.

As long as the people in the video King, J. A., Blair, R. J., Mitchell, D. G., Dolan, R. J., & Burgess, N. (2006). Doing the right thing: A common neural circuit for appropriate violent or compassionate behavior. NeuroImage, 30(3), 1069–1076.

and, Englander, Z. A., Haidt, J., & Morris, J. P. (2012). Neural basis of moral elevation demonstrated through inter-subject synchronization of cortical activity during free-viewing. PloS One, 7(6), e39384.

and, Cavanna, A. E., & Trimble, M. R. (2006). The precuneus: A review of its functional anatomy and behavioural correlates. Brain, 129(3), 564–583.

The neuronal populations affected by this Margulies, D. S., Vincent, J. L., Kelly, C., Lohmann, G., Uddin, L. Q., Biswal, B. B., . . . Petrides, M. (2009). Precuneus shares intrinsic functional architecture in humans and monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(47), 20069–20074.

and, de Waal, F. B. M., Leimgruber, K., & Greenberg, A. R. (2008). Giving is self-rewarding for monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(36), 13685–13689.

If the experimenter gave a larger reward van Wolkenten, M., Brosnan, S. F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2007). Inequity responses of monkeys modified by effort. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(47), 18854–18859.

Conceptions of leadership vary Welch was CEO of GE and Kelleher of Southwest Airlines. The two men created very different corporate cultures. Welch was known for a time as Neutron Jack because of the ruthless way he would fire employees (emptying out the buildings but leaving them standing, in the way that a neutron bomb would). In one five-year period, he reduced the payroll by 25%. Kelleher created a climate of camaraderie and fun among his employees, and Southwest is consistently named one of the top five employers in the United States by Fortune.

In a free society, an effective leader United States Department of the Army. (2012). Army leadership, ADP 6–22. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 1.

A broader definition of leadership promoted This incorporates a direct quote from Gardner, H. (2011). Leading minds: An anatomy of leadership. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Leaders show greater integration of electrical Harung, H. S., & Travis, F. (2012). Higher mind-brain development in successful leaders: Testing a unified theory of performance. Cognitive Processing, 13(2), 171–181.

and, Harung, H., Travis, F., Blank, W., & Heaton, D. (2009). Higher development, brain integration, and excellence in leadership. Management Decision, 47(6), 872-894.

friendly luxury vehicle and a midsize Tschampa, D., & Rosemain, M. (2013, January 24). BMW to build sports car with Toyota in deeper partnership. Bloomberg News

“Toxic leaders consistently use . . .” United States Department of the Army. (2012). Army leadership, ADP 6–22. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 3.

The latest version of their Mission Command United States Department of the Army. (2012). Mission command, ADP 6–0. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 2.

Trust is gained or lost through everyday actions Nearly a direct quote from United States Department of the Army. (2012). Mission command, ADP 6–0. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 3.

Having communicated a clear and concise Direct quote from United States Department of the Army. (2012). Mission command, ADP 6–0. Washington, DC: United States Department of the Army, p. 4.

“. . . What’s needed are more people who . . .” Weisbord, M. R. (2004). Productive workplace revisited: Dignity, meaning, and community in the 21st century. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, p. xxi.

Torelli and Scarlatti are credited with that Symphony. (2003). In Randel, D. M. (Ed.), The Harvard dictionary of music. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

exert the most influence on their lives Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

See also, Roark, M. H. (1978). The relationship of perception of chance in finding jobs to locus of control and to job search variables on the part of human resource agency personnel (Doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic University). Retrieved from Dissertation Abstracts International, 38, 2070A. (University Microfilms No. 78-18558).

as a group they perform better academically Whyte, C. B. (1977). High-risk college freshman and locus of control. The Humanist Educator, 16(1), 2–5.

and, Whyte, C. B. (1978). Effective counseling methods for high-risk college freshmen. Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance, 10(4), 198–200.

See also, Altmann, H., & Arambasich, L. (1982). A study of locus of control with adult students. Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy, 16(2), 97–101.

who believe they can’t respond better to larger-size models Martin, B. A. S., Veer, E., & Pervan, S. J. (2007). Self-referencing and consumer evaluations of larger-sized female models: A weight locus of control perspective. Marketing Letters 18(3), 197–209.

They are also more likely to believe that Lefcourt, H. M. (1966). Internal versus external control of reinforcement: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 65(4), 206–220, p. 206.

and, Moore, S. M., & Ohtsuka, K. (1999). Beliefs about control over gambling among young people, and their relation to problem gambling. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 13(4), 339–347, p. 339.

and, Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28, p. 1.

business owners whose shops were destroyed by hurricane Agnes United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.noaa.gov/

Those who were externals and who experienced Anderson, C. R. (1977). Locus of control, coping behaviors, and performance in a stress setting: A longitudinal study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62(4), 446–451.

The locus-of-control construct is measurable Spector (1986) advises, “The most widely used instrument to measure locus of control is Rotter’s (1966) Internal-External (I-E) scale, which consists of 23 locus of control and six filler items in a forced-choice format.”

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28, p. 1.

Employees who have an external locus Spector, P. E. (1986). Perceived control by employees: A meta-analysis of studies concerning autonomy and participation at work. Human Relations, 39(11), 1005–1016.

Higher managers tend to have There is a literature on CEO locus of control, which the interested reader may wish to consult:

Boone, C., & De Brabander, B. (1993). Generalized vs. specific locus of control expectancies of chief executive officers. Strategic Management Journal, 14(8), 619–625.

and, Boone, C., De Brabander, B., & Witteloostuijn, A. (1996). CEO locus of control and small firm performance: An integrative framework and empirical test. Journal of Management Studies, 33(5), 667–700.

and, Miller, D., De Vries, M. F. R. K., & Toulouse, J-M. (1982). Top executive locus of control and its relationship to strategy-making, structure, and environment. Academy of Management Journal, 25(2), 237–253.

and, Nwachukwu, O. C. (2011). CEO locus of control, strategic planning, differentiation, and small business performance: A test of a path analytic model. Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR), 11(4), 9–14.

Internals tend to be higher achievers Benassi, V. A., Sweeney, P. D., & Dufour, C. L. (1988). Is there a relation between locus of control orientation and depression? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 97(3), 357.

Internals, as you might expect Phares, E. J. (1976). Locus of control in personality. New York, NY: General Learning Press.

and, Wolk, S., & DuCette, J. (1974). Intentional performance and incidental learning as a function of personality and task dimensions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29(1), 90–101.

Internals tend to exhibit less conformity than externals Crowne, D. P., & Liverant, S. (1963). Conformity under varying conditions of commitment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(6), 547–555.

less attitude change after being exposed Hjelle, L. A., & Clouser, R. (1970). Susceptibility to attitude change as a function of internal-external control. Psychological Record, 20(3), 305–310.

Moreover, they’re sensitive to reinforcement Spector, P. E. (1982). Behavior in organizations as a function of employee’s locus of control. Psychological Bulletin, 91(3), 482–497.

See also, Wang, Q., Bowling, N. A., & Eschleman, K. J. (2010). A meta-analytic examination of work and general locus of control. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(4), 761-768, p. 761.

scheduling, and organizational policy Spector, P. E. (1982). Behavior in organizations as a function of employee’s locus of control. Psychological Bulletin, 91(3), 482–497.

“. . . Externals, because of their greater compliance . . .” Direct quote from Spector, P. E. (1982). Behavior in organizations as a function of employee’s locus of control. Psychological Bulletin, 91(3), 482–497, p. 486.

The combination of high autonomy This, and the sentence that follows, are nearly direct quotes from p. 221 of Lonergan, J. M., & Maher, K. J. (2000). The relationship between job characteristics and workplace procrastination as moderated by locus of control. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 15(5), 213–224.

The sandpaper salesman Richard G. Drew Kelley, T., & Littman, J. (2005). The ten faces of innovation: IDEO’s strategies for defeating the devil’s advocate & driving creativity throughout your organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.

external locus of control with more constrained jobs Lonergan, J. M., & Maher, K. J. (2000). The relationship between job characteristics and workplace procrastination as moderated by locus of control. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 15(5), 213–224.

By attributing shallow motives to employees Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Take the GM auto plant in Fremont, California Adler, P. S. (1993, January). Time-and-motion regained. Harvard Business Review, 71(1), 97–108.

and, Adler, P. S., & Cole, R. E. (1995). Designed for learning: A tale of two auto plants. MIT Sloan Management Review 34(3), 157–178.

and, Shook, J. (2010). How to change a culture: Lessons from NUMMI. MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(2), 42–51.

Employees had no control over their jobs This is nearly a direct quote from Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Sticking to a schedule helps Currey, M. (2013). Daily rituals: How great minds make time, find inspiration, and get to work. London, UK: Picador.

They’re usually a waste of time Cuban, M. (n. d.) Quoted in 15 ways to be more productive. Inc.

Warren Buffett’s datebook is nearly completely Buffett, W. Quoted in Baer. D. (2013, June 11). Why some of the world’s most productive people have empty schedules. Lifehacker. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/why-some-of-the-worlds-most-productive-people-have-emp-512473783

Paper consumption has increased The Economist. (2012, April 3). Daily chart: I’m a lumberjack.

70 million tons of paper in a year United States Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Frequent questions: How much paper do we use in the United States each year? Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/paper/faqs.htm#sources

It would take six trees The Economist. (2012, April 3). Daily chart: I’m a lumberjack.

protocopier called the letter press The modern office began taking shape in the 1870s. That decade saw the invention of the wire paper clip by the Gem company, of the stapler, and a few years later, the ballpoint pen, Burroughs adding machine, and rubber dating stamps. Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 8.

Furthermore, Yates notes, “managers of large American railroads during the 1850s and 1860s invented nearly all of the basic techniques of modern accounting, refining financial accounting and inventing capital and cost accounting.”

and, Chandler, A. D., Jr. (1977). The visible hand: The managerial revolution in American business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 109.

Squirrels can locate hundreds of nuts Jacobs, L. F., & Liman, E. R. (1991). Grey squirrels remember the locations of buried nuts. Animal Behaviour, 41(1), 103–110.

The first big improvement Lenning, M. A. (1920). Filing methods: A text book on the filing of commercial and governmental records. Philadelphia, PA: T. C. Davis & Sons.

“. . . when large amounts of filing were done.” Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 27.

similar to the three-ring binders we now use This consisted of two arched metal rings that could be opened and closed, and that were typically built inside of a horizontal drawer (these were often called Shannon files after a leading manufacturer of them).

Vertical files that resemble the ones Legacy of leadership: Edwin G. Seibels. (1999). Retrieved from http://www.knowitall.org/legacy/laureates/Edwin%20G.%20Seibels.html

“A literate, book-buying Englishman . . .” Gleick, J. (2011). The Information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York, NY: Vintage, p. 58.

“. . . The outside of the binder was clearly labeled . . .” Linda, personal communication. November 16, 2009.

A third category of reference or archival papers This is adapted from the Pendaflex School. Esselte.com.

As long as they can put their hands This information comes from interviews the author conducted with current and former White House staffers, including a former White House deputy chief of staff, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the White House.

Mike Kelleher, the director of the Office of Correspondence Kelleher, M. (2009, August 3). Letters to the President [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Letters-to-the-President

produce an e-mail when requested This information is based on interviews with three members of the White House staff, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the administration.

“These piles over here are from five years ago,” Shepard, R., personal communication. February 18, 1998.

“Yes, the desk was clean. . . .” Kahneman, D., personal communication. December 12, 2012, New York, NY.

Neat and organized are not necessarily the same thing Allen, D. (2008). Making it all work: Winning at the game of work and the business of life. New York, NY: Penguin Books, p. 131.

“. . . switching from one task to another.” Citing an interview on the PBS Television program Frontline. Yardley, W. (2013, November 10). Clifford Nass, who warned of a data deluge, dies at 55. The New York Times.

We all want to believe that we can do This paragraph is nearly a direct quote from Konnikova, M. (2012, December 16). The power of concentration. The New York Times, p. SR8.

See also, Konnikova, M. (2013). Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Many managers impose rules such as PBS Frontline. (2010, February 2). Interview: Clifford Nass. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/interviews/nass.html

As of this writing, there were thirteen hundred apps Freierman, S. (2011, December 11). One million mobile apps, and counting at a fast pace. The New York Times.

and, Readwrite. (2013, January 7). Apple iOS App Store adding 20,000 apps a month, hits 40 billion downloads. Retrieved from http://readwrite.com/2013/01/07/apple-app-store-growing-by

If you’re in a stressful environment . . . Google puts Ping-Pong tables John Kounios, quoted in Lehrer, J., (2008, July 28). The eureka hunt. The New Yorker, 40–45. Although there have been questions raised about Lehrer’s scholarship, there is no evidence that the content and quotes in the article cited here are inacccurate. These two sentences are paraphrases of quotes from Lehrer’s article.

See also: Lametti, D. (2012). Does the New Yorker give enough credit to its sources? Brow beat | Slate’s culture blog. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/

installed a full gym at corporate headquarters Somerville, H. (2013, May 12). Safeway CEO Steve Burd has legacy as a risk-taker. San Jose Mercury News.

refueling time pays off for employers and for workers The Economist. (2013, September 24). Working hours: Get a life.

and, Stanford University Department of Computer Science. (n.d.). The relationship between hours worked and productivity. Retrieved from http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/2004-05/crunchmode/econ-hours-productivity.html

two hours of overtime to accomplish one hour of work Mar, J. (2013, May 3). 60-hour work week decreases productivity: Study. Retrieved from http://www.canada.com/

A ten-minute nap can be equivalent to an extra hour Brooks, A., & Lack, L. (2006). A brief afternoon nap following nocturnal sleep restriction: Which nap duration is most recuperative? Sleep, 29(6), 831–840.

and, Hayashi, M., Motoyoshi, N., & Hori, T. (2005). Recuperative power of a short daytime nap with or without stage 2 sleep. Sleep, 28(7), 829–836.

and, Smith-Coggins, R., Howard, S. K., Mac, D. T., Wang, C., Kwan, S., Rosekind, M. R., . . . Gaba, D. M. (2006). Improving alertness and performance in emergency department physicians and nurses: The use of planned naps. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 48(5), 596–604.

ratings from their supervisors improved Schwartz, T. (2013, February 10). Relax! You’ll be more productive. The New York Times, p. SR1.

It is now well known that some Crowley, S. (2013, November 11). Perks of the dot-com culture [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.myfoxny.com/

Deloitte encourages employees to donate CNN Money. (2013). Fortune: 100 best companies to work for. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/

simulated a military exercise Streufert, S., Suedfeld, P., & Driver, M. J. (1965). Conceptual structure, information search, and information utilization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2(5), 736.

See also, Streufert, S., & Driver, M. J. (1965). Conceptual structure, information load and perceptual complexity. Psychonomic Science 3(1), 249–250.

According to the theory of optimal information Streufert, S., & Schroder, H. M. (1965). Conceptual structure, environmental complexity and task performance. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality 1(2), 132–137.

consumers make poorer choices with more information Jacoby, J. (1977). Information load and decision quality: Some contested issues. Journal of Marketing Research, 14(4), 569–573.

and, Jacoby, J., Speller, D. E., & Berning, C. K. (1974). Brand choice behavior as a function of information load: Replication and extension. Journal of Consumer Research, 1(1), 33–42.

and, Jacoby, J., Speller, D. E., & Kohn, C. A. (1974). Brand choice behavior as a function of information load. Journal of Marketing Research, 11(1), 63–69.

the decision to purchase a home Malhotra, N. K. (1982). Information load and consumer decision-making. Journal of Consumer Research, 8(4), 419–430.

as how much, they make better decisions Ariely, D. (2000). Controlling the information flow: Effects on consumers’ decision-making and preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(2), 233–248.

information you don’t care about and can’t use Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

developed information theory in the 1940s Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423, 623–656.

See also, Cover, T. M., & Thomas, J. A. (2006). Elements of information theory (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience.

and, Hartley, R. V. L. (1928). Transmission of information. The Bell System Technical Journal, 7(3), 535–563.

Pierce, J. R. (1980) An introduction to information theory: Symbols, signals, and noise. New York, NY: Dover Publications.

transmitted only 300–3300 hertz Anderson, H., & Yull, S. (2002). BTEC nationals—IT practioners tutor resource pack. Oxford, UK: Newnes.

The two additional facts that the grid The bit calculation depends on how a programmer allocates the information to an algorithm. The three instructions might be

shape[square]

size[8]

coloration[alternate].

Or they could be

horizontal size[8]

vertical size[8]

coloration[alternate].

Either case requires 3 commands, and hence, in binary arithmetic, 2 bits (which leaves one bit to spare because 2² conveys 4 pieces of information).

loaded chess board require a minimum of 64 pieces of information Certain configurations could be described with less than 64 pieces of information, such as the starting configuration, which could be described in 32 pieces to represent each of the chess pieces, plus a 33rd instruction that said “all other squares are empty.”

Information theory can be applied In mathematics (the branch of topology) and computer science, a completely downward hierarchical business org chart can be described as a special case of a directed acyclic graph (DAG). A DAG in which all supervision is downward is acyclic, meaning no person lower in the chart loops back up to supervise a higher-up on any occasion; indeed, this is the way in which most corporations function. However, an org chart that is drawn to represent not reporting structure but communication structure would naturally have loops representing when underlings report back up to their superiors.

See, for example, Bang-Jensen, J., & Gutin, G. (2007). Digraphs: Theory, algorithms and applications. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

and, Christofides, N. (1975). Graph theory: An algorithmic approach. New York, NY: Academic Press.

and, Harary, F. (1994). Graph theory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

completely and accurately specified in 2 bits The org chart shown on page 315 can be conveyed in four computer instructions, or 2 bits:

Structure[standard tree]

Supervisees per supervisor[3]

Levels-like-this[4]

Supervisees per supervisor at last level[>=50, <=100]

needs to be described individually Kolmogorov, A. N. (1968). Three approaches to the quantitative definition of information. International Journal of Computer Mathematics 2(1–4), 157–168.

and, Kolmogorov, A. (1963). On tables of random numbers. The Indian Journal of Statistics, Series A 25(4), 369–375.

calculate the degree of structure (or organization) This notion was first introduced to me in: Hellerman, L. (2006). Representations of living forms. Biology and Philosophy, 21(4), 537–552.

Hellerman used it to quantify the degree of organization in biological entities. For him, the principal feature of an organized system involved differentiability. That is, if the parts of an organism are differentiable, it can be said that it has greater organization. A unicellular organism has minimal organization.

He introduces a formula:

Let n_i denote the number of things in the ith part.

v denotes the value of the degree of structure in an information-theoretic sense

lg denotes the logarithm base 2

Then, v(n1, n2, . . . , nk) = n₁lg(n/n₁) + n₂lg(n/n₂) + . . . +n_klg(n/n_k)

A flat structure with undifferentiated parts would have an organization value of 0.

Completely vertical and completely horizontal structure have the same amount of information because {0,8} = {8,0}. So there’s a Pareto optimum for organization when the tree is well structured.

Work flow charts can be similarly analyzed Work flow chart taken from Cardoso, J. (2006). Approaches to compute workflow complexity. In F. Leymann, W. Reisig, S. R. Thatte, & W. van der Aalst (Eds.), The role of business processes in service oriented architectures. IBFI: Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany.

To ensure you’ll be able to locate important documents Merrill, D. C., & Martin, J. A. (2010). Getting organized in the Google era: How to get stuff out of your head, find it when you need it, and get it done right. New York, NY: Crown Business.

“When my assistant adds a new meeting . . .” Merrill, D. C., & Martin, J. A. (2010). Getting organized in the Google era: How to get stuff out of your head, find it when you need it, and get it done right. New York, NY: Crown Business, p. 161.

As of this writing, 90% of the world’s data Pinheiro, E., Weber, W-D., & Barroso, L. A. (2007). Failure trends in a large disk drive population. Proceedings of the 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST), Mountain View, CA. Retrieved from http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

15 degrees Centigrade can double failure rates Cole, G. (2000). Estimating drive reliability in desktop computers and consumer electronics systems. Seagate Technology Paper TP-338.1.

Probabilities that a hard drive will fail Schroeder & Gibson found failure rates in real installations of up to 13% per year. Application of the binomial theorem yields a 50% probability of at least one failure within five years.

Schroeder, B., & Gibson, G. A. (2007). Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you? Proceedings of the 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST), Mountain View, CA. Retrieved from http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/ftp/Failure/failure-fast07.pdf

See also: He, Z., Yang, H., & Xie, M. (2012, October). Statistical modeling and analysis of hard disk drives (HDDs) failure. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers APMRC, pp. 1–2.

suffer a disk failure within two years Vishwanath, K. V., & Nagappan, N. (2010). Characterizing cloud computing hardware reliability. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM symposium on cloud computing. New York, NY: ACM (pp. 193–204).

“. . . Scattered like confetti after New Year’s Eve.” Boutin, P. (2013, December 12). An app that will never forget a file. The New York Times, p. B7.

CHAPTER 8

This is according to no less an authority Sanger, L. (2004, December 31). Why Wikipedia must jettison its anti-elitism. Kuro5hin. Retrieved from http://www.kuro5hin.org

To Wikipedia’s credit, it contains an article titled “Criticism of Wikipedia,” although that piece is, perhaps understandably, biased toward Wikipedia.

Criticism of Wikipedia. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 19, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales has stated that experts User: Jimbo Wales. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved June 30, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales

“Why would an expert bother contributing . . .” Dharma. (December 30, 2004). Comment on Sanger, L. (2004, December 31). Why Wikipedia must jettison its anti-elitism [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.kuro5hin.org

This all began with a Star Trek fanzine Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. New York, NY: Routledge.

and, Schulz, N. (n.d.). Fan fiction—TV viewers have it their way: Year in review 2001. In Encyclopedia Britannica online.

When the music impresario Bill Graham Graham, B., personal communication. October, 1983, San Francisco, CA.

Of course, as detailed here, this free ethos for Wikipedia With all these problems, you’d think that someone would start an online competitor to Wikipedia that uses professional editors and expert writers. Someone has—Larry Sanger—and it’s called Citizendium. Unfortunately, it has not been able to catch up with Wikipedia and, sadly, appears to be floundering.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum Cohen, P. (2013, July 27). Museum welcomes Wikipedia editors. The New York Times, p. C1.

As the New Yorker essayist Gopnik, A. (2013, May). Commencement address at McGill University, Montreal, QC.

Recall that being organized and conscientious Friedman, H. S., Tucker, J. S., Schwartz, J. E., Martin, L. R., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., Wingard, D. L., & Criqui, M. H. (1995). Childhood conscientiousness and longevity: Health behaviors and cause of death. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(4), 696–703.

and, Friedman, H. S., Tucker, J. S., Tomlinson-Keasey, C., Schwartz, J. E., Wingard, D. L., & Criqui, M. H. (1993). Does childhood personality predict longevity? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(1), 176–185.

more important trait than ever before Goldberg, L. R., personal communication. May 13, 2013.

and, Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, M., Kaplan, H., & Lero Vie, M. (2013). How universal is the Big Five? Testing the five-factor model of personality variation among forager-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(2), 354–370.

These difficulties arise for two reasons Beckman, M. (2004). Crime, culpability, and the adolescent brain. Science, 305(5684), 596–599.

and, Giedd, J. N., Blumenthal, J., Jeffries, N. O., Castellanos, F. X., Liu, H., Zijdenbos, A., . . . Rapoport, J. L. (1999). Brain development during childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal MRI study. Nature Neuroscience, 2(10), 861–863.

and, Sowell, E. R., Thompson, P. M., & Toga, A. W. (2004). Mapping changes in the human cortex throughout the span of life. The Neuroscientist, 10(4), 372–392.

and, Steinberg, L. (2004). Risk taking in adolescence: What changes, and why? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1021(1), 51–58.

“Eat the frog. Do that unpleasant thing . . .” Eberts, A., personal communication. November 26, 2013, Montreal, QC.

some of it deliberately planted Keller, B. (2013, November 4). It’s the golden age of news. The New York Times, p. A25. I’m sticking here very close to what Keller wrote: “The flood of social media was contaminated by misinformation (some of it deliberate) and filled with contradictions.”

“Social media isn’t journalism . . .” Keller, B. (2013, November 4). It’s the golden age of news. The New York Times, p. A25. [Emphasis mine.]

ideologically based biases in news reporting Vallone, R. P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut Massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(3), 577–585.

Aristotle, Cicero, Josephus, and Plutarch for it Murray, O. (1972). Herodotus and Hellenistic culture. The Classical Quarterly, 22(2), 200–213.

and, Sparks, K. L. (Ed.). (1998). Ethnicity and identity in ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the study of ethnic sentiments and their expression in the Hebrew Bible. Warsaw, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Although for an alternative view see Lateiner, D. (1989). The historical method of Herodotus (Vol. 23). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Biases come in many forms Nelson, R. A. (2003). Tracking propaganda to the source: Tools for analyzing media bias. Global Media Journal, 2(3), Article 9.

Librarians and other information specialists Georgetown University. (2014). Evaluating Internet resources. Retrieved from http://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/evaluating-internet-content

and, University of California, Berkeley. (2012, August 5). Evaluating web pages: Techniques to apply and questions to ask. Retrieved from http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

(A guide prepared by NASA . . .) NASA. (n.d.). Evaluating and validating information sources, including web sites. Retrieved from http://wiki.nasa.gov/federal-knowledge-management-working-group-kmwg/wiki/home/z-archives-legacy-content/federal-cio-council-where-technology-meets-human-creativity-2002/f-information-literacy/f-5-tutorial-evaluating-information/f-5c-tutorial-evaluating-and-validating-information-sources-including-web-sites/

Is the page merely an opinion . . . exaggerated Direct quote from University of California, Berkeley. (2012, August 5). Evaluating web pages: Techniques to apply and questions to ask. Retrieved from http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

The nature of the Web is that anyone can copy an article from one website and paste it to another. A re-posted article may show up in search engines as new because it is new to that particular website, not because it is new-to-the-world. Information that is old and out of date can easily masquerade as information that is new. Dates are not always displayed prominently on websites, and so it is easy to stumble upon old, outdated news. You could be relying on statistics that are outdated, have been retracted, or that applied to a different year than the one you’re interested in. Re-posters sometimes alter key information in the process; don’t assume that content has been re-posted without alterations.

One tool to help identify an altered article is the Wayback Machine (named in a nod to Jay Ward’s Peabody and Sherman cartoon from the 1950s and 1960s). The Wayback contains snapshots of the World Wide Web at different points in time. The archive isn’t continuous—it takes snapshots at irregular intervals—but it can be helpful in conducting research and validating information to see what websites looked like in the past. www.http://webarchive.org. Related to the Wayback are services that alert you when the content of a web page changes, such as http://www.watchthatpage.com/.

What domain is the web page in? Like the Old West, there are good sides of town and sketchier sides. Official and authenticated government sites are granted special domains indicated by the extensions: .gov for the U.S. (federal, state, and local), .gc.ca for Canada, .gov.uk for the United Kingdom (central and local). Other official extensions include .mil (US military). Within the .gov domain in the United States, there are subdivisions. Each state has its own second-level or subdomain (e.g., .colorado.gov and .nebraska.gov), as do some cities (e.g., nyc.gov, burlingtonvt.gov) and public schools (the Westminster, California, school district is wsd.k12.ca.us; Dallas County public schools are dallascountytexas.us). To complicate matters, some official government sites use other domains, which makes it more difficult to authenticate them, such as Florida (www.StateOfFlorida.com), Broward County (www.broward.org), and the cities of Chicago (www.cityofchicago.org) and Madison (www.cityofmadison.com). In these cases, where you can’t rely on the domain name to verify the site, there are other methods described below.

Recognized postsecondary institutions in the United States (colleges, universities, etc.) can apply for the .edu domain. These are administered by a nonprofit organization named Educause, under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The system isn’t perfect and a few diploma mills and other unsavory institutions have slipped through. See U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Diploma mills and accreditation—diploma mills. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/students/prep/college/diplomamills/diploma-mills.html

The most well known domain is perhaps .com (for commercial), and the official sites for U.S. and some international corporations generally use it. It’s an easy way to verify the identity of a site. If you want the manufacturer’s information about a drug, Pfizer.com is a company site, Pfizer.info may or may not be. Look carefully at the URL. www.ChaseBank.verify.com and www.Microsoft.Software.com are not official websites of those companies just because the company name is in the URL—what counts is the name of the company just before the .com (in this case, verify.com and software.com are the web providers, not at all the same thing as Microsoft and Chase Bank).

Different countries have their own domains, and in many cases, these are used for any website originating within that country, public or private. [http://www.domainit.com/domains/country-domains.mhtml]. Some of these include .ch (Switzerland), .cn (China), .de (Germany), .fr (France), and .jp (Japan). These can be further subdivided, such as .ac.uk and .ac.jp for academic institutions, and the self-explanatory .judiciary.uk, .parliament.uk, and .police.uk.

What domain does the site come from and is it appropriate for the source? IRS.com and InternalRevenue.com are not official websites of the U.S. government because they don’t have a .gov extension (even though the typeface of IRS.com looks very official). It is easy for crooks to make an official-looking web page.

It is easy to obtain information on the website’s registered owner by going to networksolutions.com. For example, if you look up Ford.com, you’ll get a readout that indicates the owner to be:

Ford Motor Company

20600 Rotunda Drive ECC Building

Dearborn MI 48121

US

dnsmgr@FORD.COM +1.3133903476 Fax: +1.3133905011

This appears to be the actual Ford Motor Company (you can verify their address using a search engine). (It is possible that hackers could take over Ford.com and fill it with false information. Common sense prevails; if the content seems odd, try contacting the company through conventional means, post your observation to a social networking site, or just wait—the company’s own web technicians will usually be able to restore things in a matter of hours or days.)

Is it somebody’s personal page or is it a professional organization? If a webpage is unfamiliar, acquaint yourself with the people behind it. Look for links that say “about us” or anything that will reveal the credentials, philosophy or political perspective of the organization that has responsibility for the site. There are issues here of both expertise and bias. Does the author possess the relevant credentials or expertise to be qualified to write on the topic? A religious organization opposing fracking may not have the technical expertise to discuss the environmental and engineering considerations; the Coffee Importers Association of America may not provide the best information about the health benefits of green tea. Hobbyists can be enthusiastic and even eloquent, but it doesn’t mean that they are credible experts.

Do reputable pages link to this page? You can use Alexa.com to find out by pasting the URL you’re interested into Alexa’s search box, or by putting the URL into your search engine preceded by the word link: This will return pages that link to the URL you put in. You can also restrict this list by indicating sites that come from certain domains, such as .edu or .gov by using the phrase site:.edu. So for example, if you wanted to see only links from government sources to the website of the United States Fencing Association (www.usfa.org) you’d type: link:usfa.org site:.gov

a fee in a parallel world of pseudoacademia Kolata, G. (2013, April 8). Scientific articles accepted (personal checks, too). The New York Times, p. A1.

“Most people don’t know the journal universe. . . .” Quoted in Kolata, G. (2013, April 8). Scientific articles accepted (personal checks, too). The New York Times, p. A1.

predatory open-access journals Beall, J. (2012). Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature, 489(7415), 179.

and, Scholarly Open Access. (n.d.). Beall’s list: Potential, possible, or probably predatory scholarly open-access publishers. Retrieved from http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

“Founded by pharmacists in 1995 . . .” RxList. (2013, November 20). About RxList. Retrieved from http://www.rxlist.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=64467

According to Alexa This is only as of this writing, and Alexa’s contents will no doubt have changed by the time this book is published. Alexa. (n.d.). How popular is rxlist.com? Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rxlist.com#trafficstats

If you follow the link rainbow05 (U14629301). (2010, October 26). Morphine/Butrans patches [Online forum comment]. Retrieved March 30, 2014, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/messageboards/NF2322273?thread=7841114

A Google search of .gov sites Search term used was link:.rxlist.com site:.gov.

Among the first reported links Graham, D. (1996, December). Scientific cybernauts: Tips for clinical medicine resources on the Internet. Retrieved from http://www.nih.gov/catalyst/back/96.11/cybernaut.html

the money sits in an escrow account FFreeThinker. (2012, May 23). James Randi and the one million dollar paranormal challenge [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ja6ronAWsY

and, James Randi Educational Foundation. (2014). One million dollar paranormal challenge. Retrieved from http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

and, The Skeptic’s Dictionary. (2013, December 29). Randi $1,000,000 paranormal challenge. Retrieved from http://skepdic.com/randi.html

“If psychic powers exist, they are impish . . .” Ross, L., personal communication. February, 1991.

with longer life span Thomas, D. R. (2006). Vitamins in aging, health, and longevity. Clinical Interventions in Aging, 1(1), 81–91.

(As it happens, the evidence . . .) Ebbing, M., & Vollset, S. E. (2013). Long-term supplementation with multivitamins and minerals did not improve male US physicians’ cardiovascular health or prolong their lives. Evidence Based Medicine, 18(6), 218–219.

pirates is caused by global warming Open letter to Kansas school board. Chart: Global average temperature vs. number of pirates. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

90% of lung cancers occur among smokers Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013, November 21). Lung cancer. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm

toxic chemicals within the smoke-damaged Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013, November 21). Lung cancer. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm

prone to smoking Eysenck, H. J. (1988). Personality, stress and cancer: Prediction and prophylaxis. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 61(1), 57–75.

and, Eysenck, H. J., Grossarth-Maticek, R., & Everitt, B. (1991). Personality, stress, smoking, and genetic predisposition as synergistic risk factors for cancer and coronary heart disease. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 26(4), 309–322.

Denver suburbs than in other parts of the country Fulton, J. P., Cobb, S., Preble, L., Leone, L., & Forman, E. (1980). Electrical wiring configurations and childhood leukemia in Rhode Island. American Journal of Epidemiology, 111(3), 292–296.

and, Savitz, D. A., Pearce, N. E., & Poole, C. (1989). Methodological issues in the epidemiology of electromagnetic fields and cancer. Epidemiologic Reviews, 11(1), 59–78.

and, Wertheimer, N., & Leeper, E. D. (1982). Adult cancer related to electrical wires near the home. International Journal of Epidemiology, 11(4), 345–355.

Fish oil, rich in omega-3 fatty acids Kris-Etherton, P. M., Harris, W. S., & Appel, L. J. (2002). AHA scientific statement: Fish consumption, fish oil, omega-3 fatty acids, and cardiovascular disease. Circulation, 106(21), 2747–2757.

on the efficacy of fish oil Kromhout, D., Yasuda, S., Geleijnse, J. M., & Shimokawa, H. (2012). Fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids in cardiovascular disease: Do they really work? European Heart Journal, 33(4), 436–443.

In the summer of 2013, a study Brasky, T. M., Darke, A. K., Song, X., Tangen, C. M., Goodman, P. J., Thompson, I. M., . . . Kristal, A. R. (2013). Plasma phospholipid fatty acids and prostate cancer risk in the SELECT trial. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 105(15), 1132–1141.

operates a website that sells omega-3 capsules Dr. Hyman. (n.d.). Search results: Omega 3. Retrieved from http://store.drhyman.com/Store/Search?Terms=omega+3

He voices concern about the way the blood Hyman, M. (2013, July 26). Can fish oil cause prostate cancer? Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/omega-3s-prostate-cancer_b_3659735.html

Incidentally, the American Heart Association American Heart Association. (n.d.). Fish 101. Retrieved from http://www.heart.org/

soy is preventive against prostate cancer Yan, L., & Spitznagel, E. L. (2009). Soy consumption and prostate cancer risk in men: A revisit of a meta-analysis. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 89(4), 1155–1163.

reduce prostate cancer recurrence Bosland, M. C., Kato, I., Zeleniuch-Jacquotte, A., Schmoll, J., Rueter, E. E., Melamed, J., . . . Davies, J. A. (2013). Effect of soy protein isolate supplementation on biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy. JAMA, 310(2), 170–178.

And yet we then must make a certain choice Another aspect of critical thinking asks, Is the information plausible?

In 1984, Fred Sanford, an unknown amateur songwriter from the Midwest, sued CBS Records, claiming that the Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney hit song “The Girl Is Mine” was stolen from him. How plausible is it that two of the most prolific and successful songwriters of our time would steal a song from someone else? Or that a completely unknown amateur songwriter with no track record could have written an internationally known hit single? How plausible is it that Michael Jackson could even have heard Sanford’s version? Any one of these is implausible, and for all three to occur seems very unlikely. This doesn’t prove that “The Girl Is Mine” wasn’t plagiarized, but it’s important to weigh the facts and consider their probabilities and likelihoods. Sanford lost his suit.

Plausibility depends on context. If a valuable—and highly insured—piece of jewelry goes missing from a person’s home, her claim that “somebody must have stolen it” may seem implausible, especially if it turns out that she was deeply in debt, there is no sign of forced entry into the home, and the home security cameras don’t show any unauthorized entry.

Conservative lawmakers were worried that unwed mothers were having babies just in order to claim the cash benefits available from the government. A newspaper article reported that a law was passed denying such benefits and that within six months of passage the birth rate dropped significantly. The claim itself is plausible—birthrates rise and drop all the time due to various factors—but the implication that the drop was due to the passage of the law is implausible, given that it takes nine months after conception to carry a baby to term.

According to the NBA, Shaq is seven feet one inch NBA. (n.d.). Shaquille O’Neal. Retrieved from http://stats.nba.com/playerProfile.html?PlayerID=406

The tallest NBA players in history were Manute Bol and Gheorghe at seven feet seven inches.

Brown, D. H. (2007). A basketball handbook. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, p. 20.

For over a decade, when Google conducted Carlson, N. (2009, November 5). Answers to 15 Google interview questions that will make you feel stupid. Business Insider.

and, Fateman, R., professor of Computer Science/EECS (retired), University of California at Berkeley, personal communication. January 13, 2013.

How much does the Empire State Building weigh? Carlson, N. (2009, November 5) Answers to 15 Google interview questions that will make you feel stupid. Business Insider.

and, Fateman, R., Professor of Computer Science/EECS (retired), University of California at Berkeley, personal communication. January 13, 2013.

a cubic foot of wood is about 50 pounds A cubic foot of maple wood actually weighs 44 pounds—well within an order of magnitude of this estimate. Reade Advanced Materials. (2006, January 11). Weight per cubic foot and specific gravity. Retrieved from http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html

that steel is about 10 times heavier than that A cubic foot of steel weighs about 490 pounds. Reade Advanced Materials. (2006, January 11). Weight per cubic foot and specific gravity. Retrieved from http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html

estimate of the weight, and it comes in at 365,000 tons esbnyc.com, the official site of the Empire State Building.

“. . . The weight of the building is the weight . . .” Anonymous, personal communication. April 6, 2012.

describes playing one session of this game Ackerman, D. (2012). One hundred names for love. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, pp. 82–83.

“When you make a mistake say to yourself ‘how interesting!’ . . .” Zander, B., personal communication. July 25, 2013.

students must be taught to play an active role American Library Association, Association of College & Research Librarians. (1989). Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report. Retrieved from www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.cfm

See also, Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2011). Reframing information literacy as metaliteracy. College & Research Libraries, 72(1), 62–78.

“. . . ‘Knowing’ is the absence of alternatives of other beliefs.” Kahneman, D., personal communication. July 10, 2013, Stanford, CA.

Eric Mazur in his book Peer Instruction Mazur, E. (1996). Peer instruction: A user’s manual. New York, NY: Pearson.

Such rapidly presented events capture This is a direct quote from Lillard, A. S., & Peterson, J. (2011). The immediate impact of different types of television on young children’s executive function. Pediatrics, 128(4), 644–649. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/09/08/peds.2010-1919.full.pdf+html

versus watching the slower-paced public television cartoon Caillou Tanner, L. (2011, December 9). SpongeBob SquarePants causes attention problems: Study. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Second, SpongeBob is designed for six- to eleven-year-olds This is pointed out by Nickelodeon spokesperson David Bittler, quoted in:

Tanner, L. (2011, December 9). SpongeBob SquarePants causes attention problems: Study. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

CHAPTER 9

organization gives us the freedom to be a bit disorganized Merrill, D. C., & Martin, J. A. (2011). Getting organized in the Google era: How to stay efficient, productive (and sane) in an information-saturated world. New York, NY: Random House.

the U.S. Interstate Highway System Office of Highway Policy Information (2011). Table HM-20: Public Road Length—2010 (Report). U. S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration.

Even numbers increase as they move from south to north This is the opposite of the rule for the old U.S. highway system, and so is confusing for many people. A foundational principle of human interaction design is that if a standard exists, it should be used.

Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things. New York, NY: Basic Books.

In New York State, I-87 is a principal north-south highway This map is taken from Wikipedia and is in the public domain; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter state_Highway_System#cite_note-hm20-2 Permission is explicitly granted by the creator, Stratosphere, for reuse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FHWA_Auxil iary_Route_Numbering_Diagram.svg

The periodic table of the elements The Periodic Table image is retrieved from http://0.tqn.com/d/chemistry/1/0/1/W/periodictable.jpg and tagged as “Public Domain—Free to Use” by Bing.

Elements with similar physical properties In the sixth and seventh row of the table, just to the right of Barium and Radium, the structure of the table breaks down. Rather than there being a single element in column 3, there are fifteen elements squeezed in before Hafnium and Rutherfordium (respectively) in column 4. Moving down the table, atoms become larger and heavier. When they reach a certain minimum critical size and weight, the way that electron orbitals were being filled becomes less stable around Barium (atomic weight = 56) and so a new scheme for adding electrons, the f orbital, becomes necessary. In other words, the apparent discontinuities in the table occur as a function of the way the electron orbits are filled in this subset of elements. Classing them together in this way is further justified because these elements show a great deal of chemical similarities with one another. The sixth-row squeezed elements are called Lanthanides (rare earth metals) and those in the seventh row are called Actinides (radioactive metals).

I’m grateful to Dr. Mary Ann White for this explanation. White, M. A., personal communication. November 16, 2013.

a familiar name with a new face Remembering names is made difficult by the fact that unlike the limited set of names, there is an almost unlimited inventory of faces, and we don’t have very good ways of describing and remembering them; memory for faces tends to be more holistic than feature based. If asked to describe a particular face, you might say, “She has an upturned nose, a dimple on her chin, and very thin eyebrows,” but it’s unlikely that you simply plucked this description from your memory; on the contrary, you probably pictured the face holistically and then tried to verbalize the features.

if you meet a man named Adiel The basic technique of remembering names you’ve never heard before goes back to the Greeks, who wrote extensively about memory—they had to, because a great deal of ancient knowledge was passed on orally.

John Lennon recalled in an interview Sheff, D. (2000). All we are saying: The last major interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

in their dreams James Watson. (2005, February). James Watson: How we discovered DNA [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/james_watson_on_how_he_discovered_dna

and, Kaempffert, W. (Ed.). (1924). A popular history of American invention (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Scribner’s Sons.

The three books of Thus Spake Zarathustra Cybulska, E. M. (2000). The madness of Nietzsche: A misdiagnosis of the millennium? British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 61(8), 571–575.

“Every writer wonders where fictional ideas come from. . . .” Robinson, M. (2013, November 17). The believer. Review of A Prayer Journal by F. O’Connor. The New York Times Book Review, p. 11.

“I have not written this.” Hospers, J. (1985). Artistic creativity. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43(3), 243–255.

The central executive approach to problem solving Claxton, G. (1999). Hare brain, tortoise mind: How intelligence increases when you think less. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

and, Gediman, P., & Zaleski, J. (1999, January, 11). [Review of the book Hare brain, tortoise mind: How intelligence increases when you think less by Guy Claxton]. Publisher’s Weekly, 246(2), p. 63.

All bits are created equal After writing this, I discovered the same phrase “all bits are created equal” in Gleick, J. (2011). The information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York, NY: Vintage.

Information has thus become separated from meaning Gleick writes “information is divorced from meaning.” He cites the technology philosopher Lewis Mumford from 1970:

“Unfortunately, ‘information retrieving,’ however swift, is no substitute for discovering by direct personal inspection knowledge whose very existence one had possibly never been aware of, and following it at one’s own pace through the further ramification of relevant literature.”

Gleick, J. (2011). The information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York, NY: Vintage.

“The medium does matter. . . .” Carr, N. (2010). The shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

“too much information, and so much of it lost.” Gleick, J. (2011). The information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York, NY: Vintage.

“The greatest scientists are artists as well” Calaprice, A. (Ed.). (2000). The expanded quotable Einstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 245.

and, Root-Bernstein, M., & Root-Bernstein, R. (2010, March 31). Einstein on creative thinking: Music and the intuitive art of scientific imagination. Psychology Today.

“When I arrived at Intel . . .” Otellini, P., personal communication. July, 2013.

a post on Reddit Baez, J. (2013, September 29). Levels of excellence [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/levels-of-excellence/