All posts tagged: decisions

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says Gen Z market research has led to Xbox business decisions

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says Gen Z market research has led to Xbox business decisions

Published by skeptic

Phil Spencer, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft Gaming believes that the habits of Gen Z individuals have led to the recent business decisions by the company. Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Spencer would explain the moves by the gaming arm of Microsoft and give perspective to the ‘pivot’ that the company has made in making as many games as possible multiplatform and cross-device compatible. Xbox Chief explains business pivot Spencer has had a busy 2024 so far and at the first-ever Xbox partner preview, he laid out some of the cross-platform decisions by Microsoft such as HiFi Rush, Starfield, and a host of other titles leaping to rival PlayStation. “I will say, every decision we make today and tomorrow is for the better of Xbox,” Spencer would candidly approach the moves made by the gaming company. “I know sometimes things get weaponized, that there’s some evil in the background that’s making us do things — ‘Phil hates exclusives and that’s why we’re like PlayStation and Switch now.’ Every decision we make is …

When Your Colleague Makes Knee-Jerk Decisions

When Your Colleague Makes Knee-Jerk Decisions

Published by skeptic

Fauxels / Pexels Some colleagues make knee-jerk decisions, committing themselves without weighing all considerations. These colleagues are pushy or presumptuous and let their enthusiasm overcome their reason. They get so excited about an idea, they become full of fervor, passionately extolling its merits. Further, they try to use their charm to get everyone to buy into their idea. Unfortunately, they spout their vigorous support without knowing exactly what they hope to achieve and, consequently, have no clear sense of direction. Overpowered by their own zeal, they are unrealistically positive because they react without thinking about the consequences. Their certainty that they are right has become such a compelling emotion that it’s difficult to bring them back to reality. Knee-jerking colleagues often think beyond themselves. Many truly want to make a difference and help their team to stand out or to reach a new milestone. Of course, they are happy to take the credit for a winning idea. But their goal is more often to feel valued and important than to be “right.” It is helpful …

How Emotions Impact Your Financial Decisions

How Emotions Impact Your Financial Decisions

Published by skeptic

Finances are typically considered a matter of the mind, not the heart. Whether we’re creating a budget, or picking a stock to invest in, we tend to see financial considerations as more logical and rational than other categories of decisions we make throughout the week. After all, most people agree we need to be smart when it comes to money—or else we will literally pay the price of ignorance. Decisions about money are the perfect example of how practicing what one preaches can be extremely difficult. Emotions are a primary driver of decisions, in that we tend to feel positive or negative about something immediately—it’s only later that we try to develop reasons or arguments to support this feeling.1 The feeling-first model explains why it’s so difficult for us to walk away from a new pair of shoes we love at the store or say no to a night out with friends when these purchases are not in our budget. The planner in us knows it is the logically incorrect decision, but the feeler in …

People often rely on YouTube videos to make health-related decisions

People often rely on YouTube videos to make health-related decisions

Published by José

A recent study found that 88% of participants engaged with health-related content on YouTube. Among these viewers, 85% make health-related decisions influenced by their viewing habits. Furthermore, 44% of users resort to YouTube for guidance on whether to seek medical advice or adopt certain health practices. The most sought-after videos in this segment are related to exercise and bodybuilding. The paper was published in BMC Public Health. YouTube is a popular online video-sharing platform that allows users to upload, share, and view videos on a wide range of topics, including entertainment, education, and news. It was founded in February 2005 and has since become one of the largest and most influential digital media platforms globally. Users can interact with videos by liking, commenting, and subscribing to channels, and the platform also serves as a significant source of revenue for content creators through advertising and partnerships. YouTube is also a popular source of health-related content. Studies indicate that the percentage of U.S. adults watching this kind of content on YouTube has increased from 40% in 2020 …

The wisdom of the teen

The wisdom of the teen

Published by skeptic

Their stage of life defies clear categorization. Brian Finke / Gallery Stock March 23, 2024, 9:40 AM ET This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. Teens exist in the murky space between youth and maturity—and in decades past, when the teen babysitter was a staple of American life, adults seemed to understand that. They recognized, my colleague Faith Hill writes in a new essay, that the teen babysitter “was grown-up enough to be an extra eye in the home—but childlike enough to go looking for snacks.” Faith reports that, today, the teen babysitter has all but disappeared: Many parents now believe that kids who are 12 or 13, once a standard babysitting age, shouldn’t even be left alone at home. “People seem to worry less about adolescents and more for them, and for their future prospects,” she writes. As Faith traces the decline of the …

Everyone Should Feel Bad About Kate Middleton’s Cancer News

Everyone Should Feel Bad About Kate Middleton’s Cancer News

Published by skeptic

For many years, the most-complained-about cover of the British satirical magazine Private Eye was the one it published in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. At the time, many people in Britain were loudly revolted by the tabloid newspapers that had hounded Diana after her divorce from Charles, and by the paparazzi whose quest for profitable pictures of the princess ended in an underpass in Paris. Under the headline “Media to Blame,” the Eye cover carried a photograph of a crowd outside Buckingham Palace, with three speech bubbles. The first was: “The papers are a disgrace.” The next two said: “Yeah, I couldn’t get one anywhere” and “Borrow mine, it’s got a picture of the car.” People were furious. Sacks of angry, defensive mail arrived for days afterward, and several outlets withdrew the magazine from sale. (I am an Eye contributor, and these events have passed into office legend.) But with the benefit of hindsight, the implication was accurate: Intruding on the private lives of the royals is close …

Supreme Court issues first of many expected decisions on social media

Supreme Court issues first of many expected decisions on social media

Published by skeptic

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a pair of social media cases. Catie Dull/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Catie Dull/Getty Images The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a pair of social media cases. Catie Dull/Getty Images The Supreme Court issued a pair of unanimous decisions Friday on a subject that has roiled the waters at all levels of government. The question: When do public officials—elected or unelected—violate the First Amendment by blocking critics from their personal social media pages. In Michigan and California, outraged citizens sued public officials who did that. In one case, two elected local school board members in Poway, Calif., blocked persistently critical parents from their social media pages. And in Port Huron, Mich., a local gadfly sued the unelected city manager, James Freed, after being blocked from Freed’s facebook page. The gadfly and the city manager have very different views of reality. Gadfly Kevin Lindke maintained that city manager Freed violated his right to speak by blocking him from responding to things Freed said on his page about Covid-19 policy …

Scientists find verbal abuse influences umpire decisions in Major League Baseball

Scientists find verbal abuse influences umpire decisions in Major League Baseball

Published by José

In a new study published in Psychological Science, researchers from the Université du Québec en Outaouais delved into the contentious realm of sportsmanship and justice within the heated atmosphere of professional baseball games. Their investigation reveals a surprising dynamic: verbal aggression towards umpires can actually sway their decisions in favor of the aggressor’s team. After facing verbal abuse, umpires tend to call fewer strikes against the team of the aggressor and more against their opponents. The study was motivated by a desire to understand and ultimately reduce the morally questionable behavior of verbally abusing in-game officials — a behavior surprisingly common in sports, including baseball. Despite being traditionally penalized by ejection from the game, the researchers aimed to explore the actual effects of such aggression on the decision-making processes of umpires. “Verbal abuse of officials is a plague in sport in general,” said study author Joël Guérette, a professor of kinesiology. “We wanted to find a way to reduce this morally questionable behavior. The first step was to understand how being shouted at influences officials.” …

Would you trust big work-life decisions to an AI coach?

Would you trust big work-life decisions to an AI coach?

Published by skeptic

The coaching industry has been growing fast in recent years. The success of online coaching platform CoachHub — which has raised $333.5 million since its launch in 2018 — shows that tech investors agree it’s a sector worth paying attention to. Coaching — a form of professional development that focuses on improving skills in areas like critical thinking, problem-solving and leadership skills — typically relies on an experienced coach talking directly with individuals or groups. But those human coaches are seeing the first signs of disruption by the emerging generative AI revolution. Apps like Rocky.ai and Wave point towards a world where business professionals hone their skills by talking with an AI rather than a person.  Even CoachHub, which is focused on working with human coaches, is testing AIMY, which it bills as “a prototype of the world’s first conversational AI coach.” There’s an obvious advantage to an AI coach. It can support many more people than any individual human coach can, potentially opening up the benefits of coaching to far more people. Try Big Think+ …

How fear of regret influences our decisions

How fear of regret influences our decisions

Published by skeptic

One of the primary motivators of human behavior is avoiding regret. Before the legendary behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky formalized prospect theory and loss aversion, they believed that regret avoidance was at the root of the human behaviors they were studying. However, they learned that there are behaviors that regret avoidance could not explain and were led to a broader picture. Let’s take a look at a simple game that sheds a bit more light on the psychology of regret. I have two dice — one red, one white — and two identical cups. I secretly place one die under each cup (no trickery), mix them up, and ask you to select the cup with the red die. You did not see me put the dice under the cups, so you have absolutely no information on which to base your decision. If you make the right choice, I give you $5. If not, you gain nothing. Go ahead and select one of the cups. Let’s say you pick the cup on the right. …