They could be falling prey to a consumer trap labeled "relative thinking" in a study published last year in the academic journal American Behavioral Scientist.

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In 2011, U.S. military behavioral scientist Dr. Jeffrey Bordin interviewed more than 600 Afghan soldiers and policemen and found they held overwhelmingly negative perceptions of Western soldiers.

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Mr. BENJAMIN CARNEY(ph) (Behavioral Scientist, Rand Corporation): The saying in the military used to be: If the army wanted you to have a wife, we would've issued you one.

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When the hard-nosed behavioral scientist James March taught his famous course at Stanford using War and Peace and other novels as texts, he emphatically was not teaching a literature course.

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"The ultraviolet rays from indoor tanning are generally stronger than the summer sun at noon, " said Dawn Holman, a behavioral scientist who works in the CDC's Division of Cancer Prevention and Control.

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My friend, a behavioral scientist who had no experience with pool tables except playing twice with her father-in-law, then keenly observing the avid players over the course of several family visits, made an unexpected decision.

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Criminologist Gregg McCrary, a former behavioral scientist for the FBI, said the agency gets criticized both when it doesn't warn people and when it does warn of a potential threat, as Attorney General John Ashcroft did Monday.

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Men and women also think differently about recessions, says Matt Wallaert, behavioral psychologist and lead scientist at personal finance Web site Thrive.

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