Around the Blogs, Vol. 63: Psychology, Broadly Conceived

1. A new perspective on procastination (Elizer Yudkowsky). Rarely has something sounded so true to me.

2. Jonathan Haidt meets Abraham Maslow (Will Wilkinson). As a theory, this is rather elegant.

3. "It would be one thing to get worked up over politics if by doing so, you could affect political outcomes. But the odds of casting the decisive vote in any election of consequence are vanishingly small." (Eli Dourado). Also, the less you know, the less likely you are to get into political arguments, which have wildly negative average expected value.

4. On the view that fictional characters take on "a life of their own", bossing around their creators. (J.R. Lennon). I always like having my views confirmed by someone who's actually qualified to have an opinion.

5. Would you rather be diagnosed by a computer or a human? (Alex Tabarrok). I'm inclined to agree. People have an irrational pro-human bias.

6. Are expressions of shame and pride innate? (Jessica L. Tracy and David Matsumoto, via Eric Barker). Full text here.

7. Dept. of really bad incentives (Andrew Hammel). Arts experts section.