A Typology of Insecurities in Non-monogamy

Because “jealousy” and “envy” aren’t all there is.

Advancing the Understanding of Phenotypic Mimicry in Men’s Conspicuous Consumption

Two studies advance the understanding of phenotypic mimicry in consumer products. Product features mimicking more prominent male secondary sexual characteristics are associated with men’s behavioral strategies which are higher in mating effort and lower in paternal investment in offspring, in parallel with reproductive strategies across species and within the human population. The first study demonstrated a continuous relationship between the sizes of luxury brand logos and perceptions of the owners’ life histories. Two partial replications reproduced Study 1 results. Study 2 demonstrated that a manipulation of coloration, another fundamental dimension of variation in secondary sex characteristics, generates a similar pattern of results. In both studies, men owning shirts with more prominent sensory characteristics were believed to use authority and intimidation as strategies for advancing social status, whereas men owning shirts with less showy characteristics were believed to demonstrate useful abilities and foster cooperative alliances. Participants also recognized the strategic use of luxury display properties across social contexts.

Your Loneliness Was a Design Decision Made by Your Enemy

or: they want us isolated because it's easier to sell us shit

Appearances vs Experiences: What Really Makes Us Happy

In the search for happiness, we often confuse how something looks with how it’s likely to make us feel. This is especially true when it comes to our homes. If we want to maximize happiness, we need to prioritize experiences over appearances.

A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning.

The empathy paradox

There’s an image of empathy we all know that is beautiful: the fullness of completely understanding someone else, the symbolic walk in shoes that are not one’s own. The knowledge that someone else can share a pain so acute that would otherwise seem unbearably solitary. It’s an image inherent to empathy’s definition, an image many believe in wholeheartedly. Several studies conducted by Stanford researchers alone suggest people are motivated to feel empathy, that empathy is highly associated with social desirability, that it is as beneficial as it is admired.

Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com.

On what matters

This post was originally published in Sharetribe’s internal communication channel. I wrote it to describe to the team what motivates me in…

Be jealous. Make demands. Want more.

Here's to a passionate nonmonogamy where things aren't always fair and people are needy.

Never Enough

Comparison is the thief of joy.

The Evolution of Trust

an interactive guide to the game theory of why & how we trust each other

Tightwads and spendthrifts: An interdisciplinary review

Consumers rely on a “pain of paying” to help deter their spending. While this is beneficial for some consumers, others experience levels of pain that create problems. “Tightwads” experience too much pain when considering spending and therefore spend less than they would ideally like to spend. By contrast, “spendthrifts” experience too little pain and therefore spend more than they would ideally like to spend. Neither are happy with how they handle money. In the decade since the tightwad‐spendthrift construct was introduced, much has been learned about what it is and is not (e.g., frugality, greed), what contextual factors are likely to reduce its importance, how it plays a role within romantic relationships, and when it might first emerge in childhood. This paper reviews the wide range of interdisciplinary research relevant to the tightwad‐spendthrift construct and proposes several directions for new research.

The Preference Cascade Is Only Getting Started

We are in the midst of a preference cascade about existential risk from AI.

Choosing Less‐Preferred Experiences For the Sake of Variety

Abstract. Data from several experiments show that, contrary to traditional models of variety seeking, individuals choose to switch to less-preferred option