Your Values Predict the Stories You Choose
Human beings are storytelling animals. There is no other species that spends large amounts of time watching the lives of others – fictitious or real – through the stories we read or watch. Stories do not just relate to the entertainment we consume, but are also central to the news we read or the companies [...]
Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and Paul Krugman need to get out of Maslow’s Basement.
Losing an election is tough and I have immense empathy for those who have a heartfelt vision for their country that was not fulfilled on election day. Most people who care deeply about the election, Democrats and Republicans, do so out of a real desire for the country to do better and it’s unfortunate that [...]
Where to live? Liberal, conservative, & libertarian criteria differ.
In a line of research led by Matt Motyl, at the University of Virginia, we’ve been exploring ideological differences in preferences for where one lives. This project is informed by a few ideas already out there.
The observation that cities are getting more and more partisan, as depicted in the Big Sort.
Richard Florida’s ideas about creating people-city [...]
Post-Materialism: People are increasingly motivated by values and higher order psychological needs.
Research has shown that, in the western world, people are increasingly motivated by “post-materialist” values (see work by Inglehart), meaning that physical concerns for safety, security, food, and other physical things is less of a concern. Instead, people are more motivated to satisfy their values (see examples from my 2012 SXSW presentation on this subject). [...]
Big Data Should Measure Value Fit
I gave a presentation at South by Southwest earlier this month. I appreciate the many people who voted for my idea, who attended my talk, and who gave me feedback via twitter or face to face afterwards. It was a great experience.
It was a great experience, not for the people I met or for the thrill of speaking , [...]
The Experiential Economy
I recently wrote/created (though the graphic design is not mine) the below infographic for Good Magazine in an issue dedicated to societal trends. The idea here is that the material economy (which produces physical goods like cars and electronics) is being replaced by the experiential economy (which produces experiences like food and vacations). The psychological [...]
When is investment banking immoral? A review of Greg Smith’s book, Why I left Goldman Sachs.
On Thanksgiving evening, I started reading Greg Smith’s book, Why I left Goldman Sachs late in the afternoon. I finished it around midnight. It’s a relatively easy read with a relatively straightforward message: That Wall Street, as exemplified by Goldman Sachs’ evolution, has increasingly become a place where we send many of our brightest students [...]