I find Gerd Gigerenzer’s grouchy attacks on other scholars entertaining and so I enjoyed his new book, Risk Savvy. In this he discusses risk, uncertainty and Monty Hall. Risk, Uncertainty and Monty Hall In Risk Savvy Gigerenzer brings a new perspective to the Monty Hall problem. Monty was a gameshow host famous for having a great prize…
Category: Decision Making
What Getting A Cab In The Rain Tells Us
In 1997 a collection of the great and the good on the behavioral side of economics investigated a seemingly minor question. What getting a cab in the rain tells us. Cleverly they used this minor question to consider the assumptions of traditional economics. The four authors, Colin Camerer, Linda Babcock, George Loewenstein, and Richard Thaler,…
Consumer Value And Breakage
You may well be ending the festive season with some gift cards. Some cards you might never imagine yourself using. Even well targeted gift cards can sometimes not be fully used. A balance might remain after the recipient buys what they want, or the card might get lost. To a retailer one of the potential…
Gift Giving
Gift giving has been studied by a variety of marketing researchers. Some researchers use survey methods to understand how consumers think about gifts and why they make the choices they do. Others try and analyze secondary data. They look at retailers’ point of sale systems to capture details of gift sales. Today, therefore, in the…
Reference Dependence In Primary Elections
Reference Dependence involves comparing outcomes to what we are focused on rather than an absolute scale. Thus higher pay after a cut may make us less happy than lower pay after a raise. Comparison to the reference, here past earnings, helps explain behavior. What then can we deduce about reference dependence in primary elections? Reference…
The Tragedy of Common Sense Morality
Joshua Greene uses the Tragedy of Common Sense Morality as a central theme in his book — Moral Tribes. His suggests that our brains are actually surprisingly well adapted to solve the tragedy of the commons. In the tragedy of the commons, our personal incentives to behave uncooperatively cause disaster for everyone. Greene calls this…
Dimensions of Morality
Jonathan Haidt believes he can bring people of different political approaches together. To do this it is important to understand the dimensions of morality. Understanding Others Haidt’s is an admirable goal. He is surely right when he notes that differences are not simply because “some people are good and others evil” (Haidt, 2012, page 370)….
Variety Seeking And Halloween Candy
Variety Seeking Behavior Has A Large Literature My Halloween post is about variety seeking. This is an active topic in consumer psychology. There is a strain of research that asks why some people embrace variety more than others. I generally am less excited by work on the stable differences between people, traits. People do differ…
Does WEIRDness matter?
There is a debate in psychology and consumer behaviour. This concerns the generalizability of results from western university laboratory experiments. Lab experiments can be great at isolating causes. Yet, what you discover may not apply outside the specific context. Experiments, a criticism goes, tend to use a specific pool of subjects, so called WEIRD subjects….
The Balanced Scorecard
Today’s post is about a classic of business literature. The Balanced Scorecard from Robert Kaplan and David Norton is an approach to business strategy. It is hard to argue with the basic idea that businesses should regularly monitor a variety of success factors and report how they are succeeding on each factor. Four Perspectives In…
