To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there are the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns; and it’s in the latter that the most cause for concern arises.

What we don’t know we don’t know but think we know can be dangerous, and in this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology behind it.

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It can be enjoyable, even exciting, and inspiring to watch TED Talks or read self-help books, or even listen to this show. But the truth is, doing these things won’t solve the big problems. Just taking in information cannot feed the world, won’t treat depression, and can’t change behavior; these things take a lot of work and a lot of time.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke talk about why they won’t help, yet why we still love them.

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What is it about online shopping that makes us feel so good, even when we don’t actually purchase anything? In this edition of  Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke take stock of the psychology behind the online shopping experience.

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It’s tough to eliminate bias and noise from any decision we make, so how do we deal with all the noise and bias in our life? As Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss in this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, prioritizing what’s most important can help.

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There is a lot of talk in our society today about eliminating bias from decision making, but it turns out that even if you could do that there are things influencing your decisions that are still beyond your control.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of noise vs. bias.

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We may think when we are oohing and aahing at little babies that we are just having fun, but they’re actually learning a lot about language and communication. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of infant-directed speech.

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The idea that money doesn’t make you happy is easy to get behind if you have it, but if you don’t it’s a hard one to buy into (pun intended). Yet the correlation between money and happiness is more complicated than one might think.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke explain the relationship between money, security, opportunity, and happiness.

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Why is it hard to have just one of those delicious slices of pound cake over the holidays? It turns out it has less to do with the creamy butter and more to do with the way our brains react to those white sweet grains of sugar.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss the ways our brains respond to sugar by releasing a nice amount of dopamine.

While we may think this dopamine is supposed to make us feel good, what the chemicals in our brains are trying to do is to teach us that this sugar is a good thing and that we want more of it for our survival.

This might have been beneficial to us a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, but with sweets in every candy dish, gas station, and coffee shop around the corner, craving sugar has its consequences.

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We may think that being able to pay attention to two or more things at the same time is a character trait. We say, “so and so is just scatterbrained and can’t focus on more than one thing.” But the truth is none of us can. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the psychology of selective attention.

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There is an observation in psychology that looks at how people behave when they have not lived up to the expectations they set for themselves; the “What The Hell Effect.” In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke talk about, not only what it is, but why it is.

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