In starting a business, it’s important to have clarity in what that business will deliver and who can benefit from the services. As a professional management consulting firm, ARAC delivers research solutions to a variety of industries and organizations. Research can take many different forms, and sometimes it’s hard to grapple with or even know where to begin. To help make it clear, check out the list of questions below and see if your company can benefit from our services! D

As a research psychologist, I work in a field with predominately left-leaning scientists. Several years ago, at a Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference we were asked, by show of hands, who identified as a Liberal, Conservative, or Libertarian. I, being one of maybe 10 people (out of thousands), raised my hand as a Conservative. It was at this moment that a light bulb went off in my head – no wonder I have felt so out of place in my career…no wonder I feel l

As the end of the year is upon us, most of us spend some time reflecting on the year that has passed. It is likely that we will remember most the events that have happened most recently; otherwise known in social psychology as “the recency effect.” As humans we tend to remember events, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, etc. that have happened within close proximity to today. So maybe as you reflect this year, remember this, and try to think of your life 6 months ago, 8 months ag

We make so many cognitive errors every day. We also approach our world with cognitive biases. It's not a bad thing, and to be quite frank I am tired of the world telling me that it IS a bad thing. The biases we have allow us to react to our environments and surroundings when we are cognitively (or physically) "tapped out." And let's face it, we all get "tapped out" from time to time...when we can't really handle just one more thing. It is at these times that our biases work i

Often times in the news we read the following: “Research suggests” or “studies have proven” or “X causes Y” and most of the time these taglines are not completely true. Just because a study finds a certain result does not mean that this result is the only possible result, nor does it mean it is entirely the answer. Research is never Black and White. Ever. At the foundation of research is what we call Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST), meaning we seek to test what i

Did you see that mother screaming at her kids in the store? I can’t believe she did that. She’s not a very good mother, is she?! Did that person just scream at me and honk his horn when he sped past me at the stop light? What a jerk. Do any of these questions sound remotely familiar to you? Maybe you have had these thoughts yourself, or maybe your significant other actually said them out loud. What we see is usually what we talk about – and what we see are behaviors. So of co