I know it’s rude to bring this up during the holidays, but it’s not that dress or those pants that make our collective rumps look big. We all know we’ve gotten fatter, and it’s happened remarkably...
Category - Shortcuts
Just got this automated e-mail from American Airlines reminding me of some ways I can use my frequent flier miles. Two things caught my eye: the number of miles in my account (42,061) and the following statement: You’re...
- Active Choice
- Adaptive vs. Rational
- Bias to the present
- Happiness
- Opt Out
- Self Control
- Simplify Wisely
- Social norms
Thanksgiving Tips from the Behavioral Sciences
In a Washington Post article, an interview with Dan Ariely led to the following tips for dealing with the potential food stuffage that seems to come along with Thanksgiving: Use chopsticks (or other difficult to handle...
I recently spent the weekend in California with my wife, sister-in-law, and niece. My in-laws have a Wii gaming console, of which I’ve heard but never played. Suffice it to say that I played more video games during...
The Nudge blog updates readers on a pilot project that seeks to reduce the carbon footprint in the United Kingdom: The residents are asked to make pledges in a face-to-face conversation with one of the canvassers who have been...
Conor Clarke of The Atlantic interviews Nobel laureate Ken Arrow and touches briefly on behavioral economics: This time around it seems like you hear a lot of dissatisfaction with the rational expectations model. What do you...
I’ve seen a couple of articles on the role of loss aversion and the administration’s plans to reform healthcare. For example, Peter Ubel — a nice guy whom I’ve known for a long time — writes at...
The New York Times reports that loss aversion steers professional golfers to putt for birdie significantly less often than putting for par, according to two professors from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton...
A New York Times piece on the rise of smart phones offers an interesting take on how social norms drive use of technologies via expectations: “The social norm is that you should respond [to e-mail] within a couple of hours...
John Edgell, guest columnist at CQ Politics, reviews the importance of behavioral economics in the Obama White House, especially as it applies to healthcare reform: What perhaps matters more [than the daunting problems in the...
