One of the enduring fictions of neuromarketing is that there is a "buy button" in the brain. Marketers salivate at the thought, and consumer groups fear it. (Some might say that marketers have been pushing that button with seductive products and advertisements long before neuroscience was a recognized discipline!) In reality, though, decision…

The human mind may be well suited to surviving in dangerous forests and plains, but it doesn't do as well with modern financial decisions. A lengthy and…

In our recent article on The Mating Mind, we described how "romantically primed" men were much more likely to spend lots of money than men who were not so…

The Best of the Brain from Scientific American: Mind, Matter, and Tomorrow's Brain (Edited by Floyd E. Bloom MD; Dana Press, 270 pp.) is a wide-ranging…

"Remember that a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language." So said Dale Carnegie, famed author of How to Win Friends and…

When we wrote our recent review of Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds by Dan Hill, our interest in facial coding was sparked. Or, perhaps, re-sparked; when…

These days, people are spending a lot of time online, much of it in Web communities and social networks. Second Life is a virtual world in which users create…

Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success by Dan Hill (Beaver's Pond Press) builds on the premise that "facial coding," the interpreting of the…

Would wine thought to be from California taste better than wine from North Dakota, even if it was poured from the same bottle? It's no surprise that the…

This may not be news to parents of small kids, but branding is a potent force even among preschool children. A new study of preschoolers in California shows…