Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one ...

Do you keep second-guessing your decisions after you’ve made them? Immobilizing yourself? Berating yourself when you finally decide on something? This can be a normal albeit painful way to make ...

MOST OF US have experienced conflicting beliefs at one time or another. For instance, you know that drinking too much alcohol is bad for your health, but you pour yourself a second glass of wine ...

Conversation among us is peppered with observations of the division within the American population. The division is revealed in a number of forms. It may be the acknowledgement of the political gap ...

4."When the pandemic started, a friend of mine got really obsessed with the fact that you can't leave your home or go near people without a mask — but it never reflected in his own actions. He judged ...

In 1934, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit eastern India, killing thousands and devastating several cities. Curiously, in areas that were spared the worst destruction, stories soon spread that an even ...

Cognitive dissonance occurs when new information that conflicts with someone’s deeply held beliefs causes that person to feel mental discomfort. It is prevalent in people who believe sweeping false ...

In my roles as a CIO, entrepreneur, investor and Professor (I teach a course at Berklee called “The Innovator’s DNA”), I think about innovation constantly. I know from personal experience (”What ...

This is the 14th article in the Behavioral Finance and Macroeconomics series exploring the effect behavior has on markets and the economy as a whole and how advisors who understand this relationship ...

Thomas Plante (@ThomasPlante) Augustin Cardinal Bea, SJ professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, is a faculty scholar with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and an adjunct clinical ...

In the Aesop’s fable, the fox tries hard to get his hands on a tasty vine of grapes, but fails in all of his attempts to acquire the grapes; at which point the fox convinces himself that he really ...