Human Psychology
The Spotlight Effect: Nobody Is Watching You As Much As You Think
You show up to a meeting with a stain on your shirt and spend the next hour acutely aware of it, certain that everyone in the room has noticed and is priva…
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Results for "spotlight effect"
23 articles found
Human Psychology
Human Psychology
The Halo Effect: How One Trait Colours Everything Else We See
Edward Thorndike named the halo effect in 1920 based on his research with military officers. He noticed that officers' ratings of their soldiers were highl…
Human Behaviour
The Bystander Effect: Why We Watch and Do Nothing
In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked outside her apartment in New York City. Newspaper reports at the time claimed that 38 witnesses watched…
Human Stupidity
Illusory Superiority: Why Everyone Thinks They Are Above Average
Garrison Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon is a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average…
Human Psychology
The Anchoring Effect: How the First Number You Hear Controls Your Thinking
Before you answer the next question, spin an imaginary wheel of fortune. It stops on 65. Now: what percentage of African countries are members of the Unite…
Human Psychology
Learned Helplessness: When Experience Teaches You to Stop Trying
In the 1960s, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier were conducting experiments with dogs, running standard classical conditioning procedures involving mild ele…
India Travel
The Backwaters of Alleppey
I have mentioned the backwaters in another post, but Alleppey, or Alappuzha, deserves its own spotlight. This is the heart of Kerala's backwater region, an…
Phase 4
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022): Ryan Coogler's Tribute to Chadwick Boseman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a film shaped by grief. Following the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman, director Ryan Coogler reworked the sequel to hono…
Human Psychology
Ego Depletion and Willpower: The Glucose Theory of Self-Control
Roy Baumeister introduced the idea of ego depletion in the late 1990s. The hypothesis was simple and compelling: self-control draws on a limited resource…
Human Stupidity
Dunning-Kruger Is Not What You Think It Is
If you spend any time in online debates, you have probably seen the Dunning-Kruger effect invoked. Someone says something confidently wrong, and someone el…
Human Behaviour
Emotional Contagion: You Catch Other People's Feelings Like a Cold
You have probably noticed that spending time with a certain person leaves you feeling energised and good, while spending time with someone else leaves you…
Technology
Article 5 of the Indian Constitution Explained
Introduction Constitution of India provides the legal foundation for citizenship in the country. Among its provisions, Article 5 is very important because…
Human Behaviour
Moral Licensing: Doing Good Makes Us Feel Free to Do Bad
Suppose you donate to a charity in the morning. In the afternoon, you face a decision that involves some ethical dimension — helping a colleague, being h…
Human Stupidity
Why We Justify Everything We Do: The Psychology of Self-Deception
There is a version of yourself you carry around in your head that is more consistent, more principled, and more logical than the version that actually move…
Technology
Indian Democracy Structure History Elections Rights and Challenges of the World's Largest Democratic System
largest democracy, with more than one billion eligible voters participating in elections. The democratic system of India allows citizens to choose their re…
Functional Programming
Functional Programming in Java: Beyond Lambdas
When Java 8 dropped, everyone started using lambdas, but many stopped there. Functional programming is more than just syntactic sugar for anonymous classes…
Human Behaviour
Social Conformity: Why We Change Who We Are for the Room We Are In
In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch ran a set of experiments so simple they almost seem like a joke. He gathered participants in a room and showed them…
Human Psychology
Why Humans Are Addicted to Stories Over Facts
Here is a statistic: global child mortality has fallen by more than half since 1990, representing tens of millions of lives saved. Most people have no accu…
Human Psychology
Why Smart People Make Dumb Decisions Every Single Day
You probably know someone who aced every exam, got into a top university, and still manages to make baffling choices in their personal life. Maybe that per…
Human Stupidity
Sunk Cost Fallacy: Why We Throw Good Money After Bad
You have been watching a film for forty-five minutes and you are not enjoying it. You paid for the ticket. Do you leave, or do you sit through the remainin…
Stack Overflow
How Stack Overflow Made Me a Better Googler
Before I started using Stack Overflow heavily, my Google searches were vague. I’d type something like 'my website is broken' and wonder why I got bad res…
React
React Hooks Deep Dive: useState, useEffect, and Beyond
When React Hooks were introduced in version 16.8, they fundamentally changed how we write React components. The old class-based approach with lifecycle met…
Real-Time
Real-Time Collaboration with CRDTs: Beyond Operational Transformation
Building real-time collaborative features like those in Google Docs or Figma requires handling concurrent edits without conflicts. Operational Transformati…