While working as a research fellow at Harvard, B. F. Skinner carried out a series of experiments on rats, using an invention that later became known as a "Skinner box." A rat was placed in one of these boxes, which had a special bar fitted on the inside. Every time the rat pressed this bar, it was presented with food. The rate of bar-pressing was automatically recorded. Initially, the rat might press the bar accidentally, or simply out of curiosity, and as a consequence receive some food. Over time, the rat learned that food appeared whenever the bar was pressed, and began to press it purposefully in order to be fed. Comparing results from rats given the "positive reinforcement" of food for their bar-pressing behavior with those that were not, or were presented with food at different rates, it became clear that when food appeared as a consequence of the rat's actions, this influenced its future behavior.

Let's return to a time in which photographs were not in living color. During that period, people referred to pictures as "photographs" rather than "black-and-white photographs" as we do today. The possibility of color did not exist, so it was unnecessary to insert the adjective "black-and-white." However, suppose we did include the phrase "black-and-white" before the existence of color photography. By highlighting that reality, we become conscious of current limitations and thus open our minds to new possibilities and potential opportunities. World War I was given that name only after we were deeply embattled in World War II. Before that horrific period of the 1940s, World War I was simply called "The Great War" or, even worse, "The War to End All Wars." What if we had called it "World War I" back in 1918? Such a label might have made the possibility of a second worldwide conflict a larger reality for governments and individuals. We become conscious of issues when we explicitly identify them.

The tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. You can spot this pattern everywhere. You buy a dress and have to get new shoes and earrings to match. You buy a toy for your child and soon find yourself purchasing all of the accessories that go with it. It's a chain reaction of purchases. Many human behaviors follow this cycle. You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing. Going to the bathroom leads to washing and drying your hands, which reminds you that you need to put the dirty towels in the laundry, so you add laundry detergent to the shopping list, and so on. No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior

While leaders often face enormous pressures to make decisions quickly, premature decisions are the leading cause of decision failure. This is primarily because leaders respond to the superficial issue of a decision rather than taking the time to explore the underlying issues. Bob Carlson is a good example of a leader exercising patience in the face of diverse issues. In the economic downturn of early 2001, Reell Precision Manufacturing faced a 30 percent drop in revenues. Some members of the senior leadership team favored layoffs and some favored salary reductions. While it would have been easy to push for a decision or call for a vote in order to ease the tension of the economic pressures, as co-CEO, Bob Carlson helped the team work together and examine all of the issues. The team finally agreed on salary reductions, knowing that, to the best of their ability, they had thoroughly examined the implications of both possible decisions.

When self-handicapping, you're engaging in behaviour that you know will harm your chances of succeeding: you know that you won't do as well on the test if you go out the night before, but you do it anyway. Why would anyone intentionally harm their chances of success? Well, here's a possible answer. Say that you do study hard. You go to bed at a decent time and get eight hours of sleep. Then you take the maths test, but don't do well: you only get a C. What can you conclude about yourself? Probably that you're just not good at maths, which is a pretty hard blow to your self-esteem. But if you self-handicap, you'll never be in this position because you're creating a reason for your failure. You were bound to get a C, you can tell yourself, because you went out till 1 a.m. That C doesn't mean that you're bad at maths; it just means that you like to party. Self-handicapping seems like a paradox, because people are deliberately harming their chances of success.

Early in the term, our art professor projected an image of a monk, his back to the viewer, standing on the shore, looking off into a blue sea and an enormous sky. The professor asked the class, "What do you see?" The darkened auditorium was silent. We looked and looked and thought and thought as hard as possible to unearth the hidden meaning, but came up with nothing — we must have missed it. With dramatic exasperation she answered her own question, "It's a painting of a monk! His back is to us! He is standing near the shore! There's a blue sea and enormous sky!" Hmm... why didn't we see it? So as not to bias us, she'd posed the question without revealing the artist or title of the work. In fact, it was Caspar David Friedrich's The Monk by the Sea. To better understand your world, consciously acknowledge what you actually see rather than guess at what you think you are supposed to see.

Consider the story of two men quarreling in a library. One wants the window open and the other wants it closed. They argue back and forth about how much to leave it open: a crack, halfway, or three-quarters of the way. ) No solution satisfies them both. Enter the librarian. She asks one why he wants the window open: "To get some fresh air." She asks the other why he wants it closed: "To avoid a draft." After thinking a minute, she opens wide a window in the next room, bringing in fresh air without a draft. This story is typical of many negotiations. Since the parties' problem appears to be a conflict of positions, they naturally tend to talk about positions — and often reach an impasse. The librarian could not have invented the solution she did if she had focused only on the two men's stated positions of wanting the window open or closed. Instead, she looked to their underlying interests of fresh air and no draft.

In one survey, 61 percent of Americans said that they supported the government spending more on ‘assistance to the poor'. But when the same population was asked whether they supported spending more government money on ‘welfare', only 21 percent were in favour. In other words, if you ask people about individual welfare programmes — such as giving financial help to people who have long-term illnesses and paying for school meals for families with low income — people are broadly in favour of them. But if you ask about ‘welfare' — which refers to those exact same programmes that you've just listed — they're against it. The word ‘welfare' has negative connotations, perhaps because of the way many politicians and newspapers portray it. Therefore, the framing of a question can heavily influence the answer in many ways, which matters if your aim is to obtain a ‘true measure' of what people think. And next time you hear a politician say ‘surveys prove that the majority of the people agree with me', be very wary.