I’m always a sucker for articles on the brain and the various ways our hardwiring affects us.  And this article gives us 47 to think about.  Since a lot of financial planning is helping people do the right thing, understanding the brains landscape and how to work with its biases rather than against it can be very helpful.

  1. You Have “Inattention Blindness”
  2. You READ FASTER With a longer Line Length But PREFER Shorter
  3. You Can Only Remember 3 to 4 Things At A Time
  4. You Imagine Objects From Above and Tilted
  5. You Make Most of Your Decisions Unconsciously
  6. You Reconstruct Your Memories
  7. You Actually Can’t Multi-Task
  8. Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information
  9. Blue and Red Together is Hard On Your Eyes
  10. You Want More Choices and Information Than You Can Actually Process
  11. Why You Can’t Resist Paying Attention to Food, Sex, or Danger
  12. When it comes to technology, you definitely “act your age”
  13. Want To Change a Habit? Use Fun, Surprise, and a Crowd
  14. Reading Text Online Is Not Fun
  15. If You Use Social Media Without Laughter You Aren’t Being Social
  16. The Ability To Delay Gratification Or Not Starts Young
  17. Your Unconscious Knows First
  18. What People Look At On a Picture Or Screen Depends On What You Say To Them
  19. It’s a Myth That All Capital Letters Are Inherently Harder to Read
  20. Your Attention Is Riveted By Pictures Of People
  21. You Overestimate Your Reactions to Future Events
  22. Peripheral Vison — Keeping You Alive or Channel Surfing?
  23. You Are Hard-Wired For Imitation and Empathy
  24. You Are Most Affected By Brands and Logos When You Are Sad Or Scared
  25. Trust Your Gut or Be Logical? It Depends On Your Mood
  26. Culture shapes our brain
  27. We go below the “fold”
  28. Things that are close together seem to belong together
  29. Brand Names Talk To Our “Old” Brains
  30. Our “strong tie” group size is 150 people
  31. The Desire For Control And Choice Is Built In
  32. Synchronous activity bonds the group
  33. Bite-Sized Chunks Of Info Are Best
  34. Too Much Stress Results In Poor Performance
  35. People Make Mistakes
  36. People are Inherently Lazy
  37. People Assume It’s You, Not The Situation
  38. Even The Illusion Of Progress Is Motivating
  39. Your Mind Wanders 30% of the Time
  40. “You’re Easily Influenced, but I’m not”
  41. Your Most Vivid Memories Are Wrong
  42. We’ll spend more money if you don’t mention money
  43. People Expect Online Interactions to Follow Social Rules
  44. When Uncertain, People Look To Others to Decide What To Do
  45. You Choose (And Vote For) The First One On The List
  46. The more uncertain you are, the more you dig in and defend your ideas
  47. People Value A Product More Highly If It Is Physically In Front Of Them