Understanding convictions, your own included

Answering yes or no is quicker, and it is also what manufactures the most artificial opinions. Here is what is gained by asking how much, rather than which side.

Between someone who distinguishes four shades of annoyance and someone who distinguishes only one, the difference can be measured. It has a name: emotional granularity.

The preferences people state before an encounter predict very poorly the people they then choose. The result is solid, and it unsettles the identikit portraits.

The most famous cleavage in political life was born from a detail of seating in an assembly. Two centuries later, it still informs, but much less than one thinks.

Testing an experiment again is difficult everywhere. When the participants are twelve months old, it becomes a problem of organisation as much as of method.

A large share of the figures about work circulating in the press comes from commissioned studies. A few checks are enough to situate what they are worth.

It is not an impression, it is a theorem. Proved in 1991, it follows from how a network is sampled when one follows its ties.

We do not form our convictions alone in an empty room. Knowing who shares them modifies what we think, and even more what we agree to say.

Some people know on entering that something has happened. That perception is real, it is useful, and it says nothing about the cause.

The best-established factor in attraction is neither charm nor affinity: it is the probability of crossing paths. A result from 1950 that seventy-five years have not refuted.

Two people attached to equality may defend opposite policies. Most often because they are not talking about the same equality, and are not aiming at the same place.

France legislated in 2018 and several countries followed. Available evaluations are few, dated, and their results diverge.

The accident of graduation year produces earnings gaps still measurable ten years later. The result is among the most solid in labour economics.

It is one of the strongest regularities in social graphs. It explains why networks close in on themselves without anyone deciding so.

Adding dimensions to a political description makes it both more faithful and more fragile. Here is the trade-off, stated without marketing.