Art Markman, Ph.D.

For most of us, life is just too busy. It is hard to do everything you want and need to do in a day. If you're lucky, then your failures are not that systematic. One day, you get to the gym, but don't get to relax with a book. Another...

When Barack Obama announced that he was supporting same-sex marriage, he cast the discussion in moral terms. The focus of his remarks was on fairness. He pointed out, for example, that there are gay men and women serving in the military who are not free to marry the people they...

On Sunday nights, I play in the horn section of a blues band. Each week, musicians come from all over town to play with us. So, over the course of the night, I get many opportunities to hear people play solos on a variety of instruments. And sometimes, I am...

The old joke says that you only need one psychologist to change a light bulb, but the light bulb has to want to change. Part of wanting to change is changing your attitude toward some behavior. A smoker needs to start thinking about why the dangers of smoking outweigh the...

It is tempting to think of our eyes as video cameras that take in information about the world and try to give us a reasonably accurate picture of what is going on in the outside world.

Key arguments against this way of thinking about vision were made by

Philosophers and observers of human behavior have noticed that people often make moral claims that they cannot live up to. There are countless examples of scandals involving religious and political leaders who talk publicly about living up to high moral standards, but whose personal lives do not measure up. These...

There are many different roads to innovation. James Dyson developed his vacuum cleaner by noticing an analogy between vacuum cleaners and sawmills. George DeMestral created Velcro after looking at cockleburs sticking to the fur of his dog.

One strand of insight comes from breaking functional fixedness. The idea behind functional...

Our ethical principles often come into conflict. On the one hand, we believe that honesty is the best policy, but on the other, we believe that we should try to be nice to other people as often as possible. Consider, then, the case of a bad meal at a restaurant....

The amount of food you eat is affected by the size of the portion you get. At restaurants, for example, people generally eat what is on their plate. So the more food they are given, the more that they will eat. This is a particular problem because obesity rates are...

Election season is upon us. The news is filled with stories about primaries and the lineup of candidates for the November elections. If you live in a state with a contested race, then you hear lots of ads. Some of those ads pump up a particular candidate, but many of...

Some of the most stressful situations in life happen when you're not sure what to do. Suppose you go to the doctor and she finds a suspicious-looking mole on your skin. There is some chance that it might be a dangerous skin cancer. Just the word "cancer" is enough to...

In the U.S., primary season is upon us. Republican Presidential candidates are battling for the opportunity to face Barack Obama in the November election.

In many First World countries like the United States, only a fraction of the eligible voters actually vote. In the 2008 election, for example, only about...

What does it mean to be wise? People with great wisdom are able to put events into perspective. Often, that means recognizing that the world never stays the same. The good times will never stay as good as they seem in the moment, and the bad times will get better....

I have three teenage boys at home, and two of them are in their last year of high school. They are about as forgetful as any human being is capable of being. They routinely forget all kinds of things ranging from appointments, to chores, to homework assignments. With the older...

One of the most frequent questions I get when I talk about thinking to groups is whether technology is making us smarter or dumber. In particular, many parents are worried that Google or Wikipedia are making kids less likely to want to learn.

The easy availability of the answers to...

There is a real paradox in our relationship with the quality of being nice. On the one hand, parents want their kids to be nice. Just the other day, I was walking the dog and two boys were playing in the front yard. One said something mean to the other,...

There are lots of ways to show other people that you have status. I travel a lot, and the airlines treat frequent travelers specially. At the start of the boarding process, the people who fly a particular airline often get on the plane first, and are often given upgrades to...

The field of medicine has understood the importance of hand washing for almost 200 years. The Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis found that when people in an obstetric clinic washed their hands, incidence of infections plummeted. These days, hospitals have signs all over that remind patients and staff to wash...

School is back in session. After a couple of weeks of holiday relaxation, the kids are returning to their school habits. As we start 2012, I wanted to take some time to look at ways to improve study habits in the coming year. A lot of what I'm including here...

It turns out to be difficult to tell when other people are lying. There are lots of cues that we believe will tip us off to whether someone is telling the truth. We expect people telling the truth to be more confident, to look us in the eye when they...