Professor Kim Kyung-il and KU students at the lecture. Photographed by Park Min Ha.

By Park Min Ha (parkminha@korea.ac.kr)

On November 27, Professor Kim Kyung-il (Department of Psychology, Ajou University) visited the Global Conference Hall of the Centennial Memorial Samsung Hall at Korea University (KU) to perform a lecture titled “Seeing Happiness by Understanding the Approach and Avoidance Motivation.” The lecture was hosted by the KU Student Counseling Center (KUSCC). Many KU students attended the lecture and listened to Professor Kim as he discussed the approach to happiness and interesting mechanisms of human psychology.

The lecture began with a short introduction by Professor Ko Young-gun (Department of Psychology), the director of KUSCC. Shortly afterwards, Professor Kim started the main lecture by sharing his experience as a cognitive psychology major at KU, as well as a special encounter with the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. Professor Kim commented that Koreans are the only anomalies in Kahneman’s research, being quite an extraordinary research group for both psychologists and economists. Incorporating a variety of personal stories and research conclusions, Professor Kim conducted interactive sessions, such as asking the audience about their 2D:4D ratios or their risk aversion, to carry out his lecture about human cognitive psychology. (The 2D:4D ratio, or the digit ratio, explains that people with a longer second finger are more emotional, while those with a longer fourth finger are more assertive.)

Professor Kim labels human beings as *cognitive misers*. This term explains the tendency of men to process information in simpler and less effortful ways. Such a phenomenon appears consistently even in the simplest situations such as finding the difference between two photos, multitasking, and choosing what to purchase between two objects. On another note, Professor Kim also discussed some interesting nominations of the Ig Nobel Prize such as a research that shows the relationship between a bad weather or mood and decision-making, as well as the law of total quantity.

출처 : 고려대학교 고파스 2024-04-16 13:19:34: