Psychologyspeaking topic
Once you learn about something, you start seeing it everywhere; the car model you just bought suddenly appears on every street. Nothing changed in traffic; what changed is you and your attention. How much of our reality is what's out there, and how much is what we've chosen to notice?
— the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, the frequency illusion
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- How would you rebuild your life and career if you suddenly lost one of your most important abilities?
- Social proof: when we don't know what to do, why do we look at what everyone else is doing? When would the assumption 'everyone's doing it, so it must be right' lead us badly astray?
- Regret minimization: Jeff Bezos made his leap by asking 'when I'm 80, will I regret not having done this?'. Is imagining your future regret a good compass for today's choices?
- Extraversion in the Big Five is not just sociability, it's also about reward-seeking. Why do extraverts take more risks?
- The gambler's fallacy: after a string of heads, why is 'tails is due now' wrong? Why do we attribute memory and fairness to independent events?