As I mentioned in a previous post, I believe that neuromarketing can provide empirically valuable (albeit financially costly) insights about consumer preferences. A caveat before I begin: I recognize that my approach as an academic to the topic of neuromarketing is likely to be different than a firm that is
Below I introduce the benign violation theory and discuss a paper, Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny, that Caleb Warren and I recently published in the August 2010 volume of Psychological Science. The benign violation theory builds on work by Tom Veatch and integrates existing humor theories to propose that
Dan Goldstein at Decision Science News and Shared Goel at Messy Matters recently presented data that suggest knowing what your friends like is predictive of what you like. The post is worth checking out: We measured the extent to which your friends’ behavior predicts your own, and found that in
Check out this “Real Time Economics” Blog post in the WSJ that estimates the amount of money you need to earn to make you happy in various cities. Although happiness is “attainable” in Denver at $75,750, you need $93,000 in Boulder. Boulder is a bargain, however, compared to the $163,500
Last week at Ignite Boulder, Joel Gratz (@gratzo), a famous Boulder meteorologist and creator of weather websites for winter sports enthusiasts (coloradopowderforecast.com) and summer sports enthusiasts (dontgetzapped.com), gave a talk, “Hire a Meteorologist, Not a Stock Broker.” He argued that meteorologists are more accurate than you might think (and certainly
I had a chance recently to conduct a brief interview with Eric Farone, owner of the Bovine Metropolis (improv) Theater (LINK). Eric is a funny guy and was a speaker at TEDxBoulder. He gave an entertaining talk, which I will post as soon as it is up. I asked him
As a consumer psychologist, I have been intently following the developments in the emerging academic and applied field of neuromarketing. But first, a definition courtesy of Wikipedia (as of 8/25/10): Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. Researchers use
What makes things funny? Most think that humor has something to do with incongruity. Incongruity can mean that something is unexpected, like a cloud that farts pistachios. One critic of our recent paper argues forcefully that humor results from this type of incongruity: Another swing-and-a-miss from eggheads trying to explain
In this heartfelt episode, Peter McGraw explores the challenging yet crucial topic of end-of-life planning for Solos with Teri Ashley, a certified advance care
Welcome to the final episode of I’M NOT JOKING. Comedian JD Lopez returns from Episode 1 to debrief and reflect on Peter’s experience building
