Tag Archives: Thomas Baumgartner

When you are about to lie, or break your word, your conscience dives in to make you feel uncomfortable.  This is what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance” and what I call “the Jiminy Cricket effect” – after Pinocchio’s friend. The question is, can we know when Jiminy Cricket is waking up? It turns out that the answer is yes. Research by Thomas Baumgartner of the University of Zurich in Switzerland shows that, just before we break our word, brain scans show that that certain brain...

Read More