Maria Konnikova

Our lives don't make sense in abstraction, only when compared with the lives of others.

— Maria Konnikova

“the better they recalled the topics of conversation, the more extremely off their predictions were. In other words, the busier their brains…

— Maria Konnikova

Virtual reality has already proved useful in treating phobias and PTSD. It can help people overcome a fear of heights, for example,…

— Maria Konnikova

Once the notion of time travel starts to come naturally to the human mind, it is supremely easy to assimilate it into…

— Maria Konnikova

Before the Internet, bullying ended when you withdrew from whatever environment you were in. But now, the bullying dynamic is harder to…

— Maria Konnikova

“How did the System Holmes machine become . . . a System Watson? Simple. Holmes says it himself: he had lost interest…

— Maria Konnikova

The U.S. has some of the most significant income inequality in the developed world, yet people seem routinely to underestimate that fact.

— Maria Konnikova

When we are forced to do multiple things at once, not only do we perform worse on all of them but our…

— Maria Konnikova

Stories bring us together. We can talk about them and bond over them. They are shared knowledge, shared legend, and shared history;…

— Maria Konnikova

Understanding the psychology of changing norms starts from a simple insight: although we may wish to be perfectly rational and impartial, bias…

— Maria Konnikova

Spam filters are supposed to block e-mail scams from ever reaching us, but criminals have learned to circumvent them by personalizing their…

— Maria Konnikova

Of course, authors can still burn their manuscripts - but once something is out in the world, especially if it ever saw…

— Maria Konnikova

Gender perception can be a pernicious thing: Where a lack of warmth passes in a male, in a woman, it's deadly.

— Maria Konnikova

To the untrained eye, poker seems deceptively easy.

— Maria Konnikova

Much of the excitement about virtual reality has come from the gaming community.

— Maria Konnikova

The more extreme the story, the more successful it becomes. Emotions on high, empathy engaged, we become primed to help.

— Maria Konnikova

The problems of reporting a bully - or, if you are a bully, of becoming less of one - become much more…

— Maria Konnikova

Resilience presents a challenge for psychologists. Whether you can be said to have it or not largely depends not on any particular…

— Maria Konnikova

While today's fraternities are hardly the literary- and debate-inspired groups of yore, their core mission - or, at the least, their ideal…

— Maria Konnikova

Poker isn't the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Apart from the…

— Maria Konnikova

“We want to learn to pay attention better, to become superior observers, but we can’t hope to achieve this if we thoughtlessly…

— Maria Konnikova

I can understand pulling a book whose contents have been questioned - after all, false information has a way of sticking in…

— Maria Konnikova

Three-card monte is one of the most persistent and effective cons in history. The games still pop up along city streets. But…

— Maria Konnikova

Play up the outrage factor and suddenly groups bond together like never before - and prepare to attack like never before.

— Maria Konnikova

Thinking about time travel may seem like something humans have been doing since the first caveman dropped the first rock on his…

— Maria Konnikova