Predictably rational?
Nudge is a design tool for influencing behaviour in predictable ways which do not compromise options or change incentives. The approach comes from the work of Richard Thaler and co-workers, building on the work of Kahneman and Tversky. Nudge takes advantage of the tendency for all of us to follow the ‘path of least resistance’, ensuring that such paths lead to more desirable outcomes. Read more »
Universal patterns
Archetypes are believed to be the products of unconscious patterns that have been ‘hardwired’ into the brain over the course of human evolution (although some argue that these are purely the products of cultural conditioning). They are found in the themes of myths (eg death and rebirth), characters in literature (eg heroes and villains), and imagery in dreams (eg eyes and teeth). Read more »
We are all born with automatic detection systems, designed to help us spot danger in our environment. We are able to find threatening stimuli much more quickly than non-threatening stimuli, and this has evolutionary origins and selective advantage for us (for example, it’s more important to see a small snake in the grass than a small bird in the sky). The seminal work on the phenomenon by William James dates back more than 100 years. Read more »
The sequence of nature
A Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers – for example, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc. Patterns which reflect this sequence are commonly found in nature, for example the petals of flowers, spirals of galaxies and bones of the human hand. Read more »
