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)….
Category: Decision Making
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…
Thinking By The Numbers; Mostly Smart And Occasionally New
I enjoyed the book Super Crunchers. It is a couple of years old [in 2014] but it still reads well. Perhaps some of the surprise people might have had when it was published may have dissipated. In recent years things only the rare few knew about, e.g. metadata and data warehouses, have become staples of dinnertime conversation. It…
Fairness and Channel Coordination
Fairness matters in life. People are motivated to achieve fair outcomes. (Although people are generally quicker to notice shares that are unfair to them than to other people.) Given business is a human social endeavor it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that fairness matters in business too. Adding fairness concerns to models of how business works…
Too Much Information
Peter Shawn Taylor’s article in the July issue [2014] of Canadian Business tackled an interesting issue. Can we give consumers too much information? The Problem Of Too Much Information In Disclosures Consumers need adequate information to reward marketers offering a good a deal. As such, information is generally a good thing. That said, long legal disclaimers…
Basking In Reflected Glory
My final World Cup-related post illustrates a psychological phenomenon. People like to proclaim their allegiance to groups. They are basking in reflected glory. Who Are Your Team? Interestingly, the groups we choose to associate with change depending upon how the groups perform. This is because people associate with achievements that are not their own but that…
Six Decision-Making Lessons From The World Cup
Departing from my usual structure of analyzing a single topic I thought I’d illustrate decision making lessons with examples from the World Cup. (This post on the 6 decision-making lessons from the world cup was written in 2014). Three Decision-Making Lessons From The World Cup Firstly, regression to the mean is commonly not recognized. Spain had a very…
Penalty Kicks and Mixed Strategy
As we move into the knockout stages of the World Cup [written in 2014] the specter of penalty kicks raises its ugly head. Penalty kicks are awarded as punishments during the game. They are also used to break ties at the end of the game. Penalty kicks are especially interesting for researchers. They represent an excellent chance…
