The Psychology of...

The human mind is funny and fascinating. We are designed with systematic biases for specific purposes. Usually these biases actually work in our favour but often the errors that they cause can be significant and when I say errors, I'm not just talking about occasional goofs, these are predictable patterns of error. Something Dan Ariely calls being "predictably irrational". In today's post I want to talk about a strong bias that we all have which is often called the "loss aversion" bias. The principle here is that we weigh potential losses as more severe than an equal amount of potential gain. We are more afraid of potential suffering than we are excited about potential pleasure. An example would be someone who invests in a low-risk guaranteed return rather than a higher risk but higher return investment. When we lose $100 it hurts about twice as much as winning $100 feels good. What does this have to do with politics? Political parties know that to mobil...

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." - Alexander Pope Hello everyone, I'm Zac Rhodenizer, the Alberta Party candidate for Lethbridge West and I'm sharing some tips from the field of psychology that can help us make sense of the election on the horizon. I'm going to start with the Dunning-Kruger effect which states that the more knowledge and expertise a person has in a given subject, especially one as complex and nuanced as politics, economics, or human behaviour, the less certain that person is in their assertions. This is because as you start to understand how complex the issues are you start to "know what you don't know" and it induces a sort of intellectual humility. You may have a better idea about what is likely to be the case but you avoid black and white statements of absolute truth, because you know better. In contrast, when you know a little bit in a given field, you tend to overestimate your competence level. Nobody knows more ...

On March 2nd, 2019 the Alberta Teacher's Association held an all party forum on education. It was moderated by Kim Trynacka and attended by Education Minister the Hon. David Eggen, Alberta Party leader Stephen Mandel, Education Critic for the UCP Mark Smith, Liberal Party of Alberta leader David Khan, and Freedom Conservative Party candidate whose name I regrettably didn't note and I haven't been able to find online. The second I find his name I will amend this post. Admitting my biases, I nonetheless will try my best to objectively relay what happened and what the key messages of each party were on the subject of education. Initial Impressions : The UCP benefited from having Mark Smith there instead of Jason Kenney. He was overall quite likeable and did not seem as extreme as I expected. The most critical person on the panel award goes to David Khan with David Eggen as a close second. They were all informed and well-spoken. Eggen seemed the most like he had his ...