Monthly Archives: August 2013

Approaches to paying tips vary a lot from one culture to another. Here in the UK a number of factors influence whether a tip is paid that have nothing to do with the service you receive. For example, if payment is collected when the food is ordered, the notion of paying a service tip is essentially by-passed. On other occasions, the inability to process a tip when payment is made by a card can lead to a situation where you don’t have the cash to tip with and the hassle of getting change can nudge people towards leaving and, somewhat justifiably, blaming the payment systems. Some restaurants, an increasing number it seems, have taken to including a tip (or ‘service charge’) on the bill. In psychological terms, applying a default option is a powerful way of influencing behaviour – most people will go with it because it’s easy – but […]

Have you seen that new advert? The one with the armadillo throwing water balloons at the small family car as it drives through a field of flowers; the graphic over the top says ‘Awesome’ and is whooshed away in the breeze as the car whizzes past the countryside. It’s been on all the channels… a lot! If you haven’t seen it, does that mean it isn’t a good advert? An over-preoccupation with conscious thought processes would almost certainly bring you to that conclusion. It seems entirely logical that, assuming you’ve been watching some commercial TV you would have been exposed to it. Therefore the only logical conclusion is that you’re not being aware of it means it has been ineffective. But hold on a moment. Do you usually watch the adverts? I mean actively watch them: consciously engage with them? Perhaps you take notes in your little book of interesting […]

I don’t know about you but I hate clichés. I hate songs that have lyrics that reach for them as predictable solutions for rhyming couplets… ‘Tomorrow is another day’, ‘Down on my knees begging please’, pretty much any mention of a road (‘road going nowhere’), things that ‘cut like a knife’… you will, I suspect, have your own pet hates. Now, my objection to clichés is not that they are factually wrong (well, usually not, roads always go SOMEWHERE). My issue is that the hackneyed phrase concerned has appeared like a linguistic tick to fill the space where the person uttering it couldn’t conjure something original to say. Or perhaps it’s that, once the well-known phrase starts, the entirely predictable nature of its ending, means that I know the next two seconds will be a waste of my life! Often clichés end up being a mix of two psychological phenomena: […]

We’re rapidly approaching that time of year when people have sought to cheer themselves up by the giving and receiving of gifts.  Realising that many of you will be worrying about what to buy me, I thought now was probably the time to shine a light on the psychology of gift giving by means of a quiz. As with all the best quizzes (I really mean worst), there is no prize beyond the satisfaction of knowing your true gift-giving prowess. Would it be a good idea to ask me what I would like as a gift? a. Yes, you’d like it more if you got something you’d asked for b. No, you’d be more delighted by a surprise c. It doesn’t make a difference, each would be received equally. I tell you that what I would like as a present is either a CP Thornton Guitar, a Fender Custom Shop EC Tremolux Amplifier […]