Bolder stickleback fish make faster decisions, but they are not less accurate

Narcissistic men and women think they are so hot – But they are not

Narcissists think they are more knowledgeable, better leaders, and more attractive than others are. Higher narcissism scores in celebrities than in non-celebrities (Young & Pinsky, 2006) raise the question of whether narcissistic individuals actually are, to some degree, more knowledgeable or attractive than other individuals are. Because little research has investigated the degree to which nar...

Specialists make faster decisions than generalists: experiments with aphids

Theoretical studies and a few recent experimental reports suggest that the evolution of diet breadth in herbivorous insects is constrained by a limited neural ability to e¤ciently process large amounts of information in short periods of time. This neural-constraints hypothesis predicts that generalist herbivores should make slower or poorer decisions than specialists when selecting plants, beca...

Economic institutions mattEr , But thEy arE not thE Full story

Better science does not make decisions easier

Forty years of development in the science and technology of estimating and quantifying risk, of understanding of human behaviour and human rationale has made decision makers more informed. We are in a much better position now, than forty years ago in estimating probabilities, consequences, and damages, and in estimating and dealing with the associated uncertainties in an organised way. This did...

People Gather Only the Information They Need to Make Decisions

Imagine that you’re driving down the freeway on a foggy day. Struggling to read an exit sign, you stare at it for several seconds before you can make out enough of the letters to determine that it’s the right exit. In the past, you hardly glanced at the same sign when using that off-ramp. This phenomenon illustrates an adaptive feature of brain function. To conserve energy, you should exert a m...