A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF EXPERIMENTS NOW POSSIBLE Gabriele Paolacci sends along the following announcement. Decision Science News is also a fan of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (or mturk as we insiders call it), and it and its colleagues at Yahoo! Research are actively using with the evolving methodology. You are probably aware of the growing interest for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) as a tool for conducting experimental research in the web. By allowing to allocate tasks to paid subjects, Mechanical turk is an online labor market where subjects can be recruited and paid on a large scale and…
Decision Science
-
Decision Science News
-
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk meets classic JDM experiments
16 Nov 2009 | 9:18 am -
SJDM 2009 Boston. November 20-23, 2009.
11 Nov 2009 | 10:18 am2009 MEETING OF THE SOCIETY FOR JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING Just a reminder that the annual Society For Judgment and Decision Making Conference, the conference most in line with the interests of the readers of this blog, is just around the corner. When: November 21-23, 2009. Early registration and welcome reception will take place the evening of Friday, November 20. Where: Sheraton Boston Hotel in Boston, MA. Hotel reservations at the $175 Psychonomic convention rate can be made by clicking here. Details: Program (updated 11/6) Poster abstracts (updated 11/6) Registration form Map: Decision… -
Solving problems by thinking from a distance
3 Nov 2009 | 6:26 amINCREASED CREATIVITY WHEN THINKING ABOUT DISTANT THINGS Decision Science News has nothing against a good word problem. Heck, there would be no field of Judgment and Decision Making if it weren’t for Kahneman & Tversky’s word problems. Here’s one A prisoner was attempting to escape from a tower. He found a rope in his cell that was half as long enough to permit him to reach the ground safely. He divided the rope in half, tied the two parts together, and escaped. How could he have done this? This problem was given to students in Indiana. One group was told that this… -
Three years of funding reduces the fundamental uncertainty of the world
29 Oct 2009 | 4:01 pmMAX PLANCK POSTDOCS IN DECISION MAKING IN ECONOMICS, LAW, OR PSYCHOLOGY The International Max Planck Research School on Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World (Uncertainty-School) combines approaches from Economics, Law and Psychology to explain human decisions under uncertainty more effectively and to better design institutional responses. The Uncertainty- School is jointly hosted by the Max Planck Institutes at Jena, Berlin and Bonn, and the Psychology and Economics Departments of the FSU Jena. International Partners are the Department of Psychology of Indiana University,… -
OPIM professorship at Wharton
22 Oct 2009 | 7:04 amDEPARTMENT OF OPERATIONS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROFESSORSHIP Department of Operations and Information Management The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania The Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School is home to faculty with a diverse set of interests in decision-making, information technology, information-based strategy, operations management, and operations research. We are seeking applicants for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position. Applicants must have a Ph.D. (expected completion by June 30, 2011 is acceptable) from an accredited institution…
-
Brad Delong: Grasping Reality with Both Hands
-
Approaching Once-in-a-Decade Retrospective: Marking My Beliefs to Market
21 Nov 2009 | 6:44 pmBack on March 3, 2000 I marked my beliefs to market: took a look back at the ten most important things I had believed in the 1990s, and tried to assess how accurate my beliefs had been. Now March 3, 2010 is coming up. What are the ten most important things that I have believed most strongly in the 2000s? And how have my beliefs turned out? Suggestions, please... -
Department of "Huh?"
21 Nov 2009 | 6:17 pmWhen you praise Idi Amin, you've gone beneath the bottom of the barrel and out into the earth... Xeni Jardin:: Hugo Chavez, cannibalism apologist: Is Bruce Vilanch writing for Hugo Chavez now? 'Cause the Venezuelan leader's comedy material is pretty good lately: now he's a cannibalism apologist. In a recent speech, Chavez praised Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the late Ugandan dictator Idi "Butcher of Uganda" Amin. Said Chavez: "We thought he was a cannibal... I don't know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot." (thanks Antinous) -
More Central Bank Independence: The Fed in a Corner?
21 Nov 2009 | 5:54 pmTim Duy thinks that the Federal Reserve has backed itself into a corner. He is right that the Fed because it was independent was in a "better position to raise regulatory and supervisory roadblocks during the debt build-up compared to other, more politically susceptible agencies." But at the time the Federal Reserve did not see itself as in a much better position. As one extremely senior member of the FOMC told me in 2005: "We stand up and say: "We don't care that you lenders want to issue this mortgage and you homebuyers want to sign it, we won't let you!' and how long do we last in front of… -
The Biggest Entitlement Spending Cut in History--and "Deficit Hawks" Are Running Away from It - Health-care reform's grand bargain
21 Nov 2009 | 5:54 pmIt's buried in the health care bill. We think it has teeth--and the Congressional Budget Office agrees: Ezra Klein - Health-care reform's grand bargain: This is how health-care reform controls costs. It is, at its base, a grand bargain: The coverage expansion gets liberals to agree to, and even advocate for, cost controls they would never otherwise consider. A 6 percent growth target? A super-MedPAC -- now called the Independent Medicare Advisory Board -- that reforms Medicare to save money and whose recommendations are fast-tracked and protected from the filibuster? Hundreds of pages of… -
What Should We Be Doing to the Federal Reserve?
21 Nov 2009 | 5:53 pmFree Exchange muses on central bank independence. I haven't done a nose count on the FOMC. But it is pretty clear that right now it has too many inflation hawks on it and not enough unemployment hawks. The only saving grace is that other central banks are worse--some much worse. In the 1970s the American Congress learned that it did not want to exercise oversight over the Federal Reserve--that opining and trying to influence was a political loser, because mistakes would be made and if you had pushed for the policies that produced them you took part of the blame. Now it looks as though the…
-
WordPress Tag: Behavioral Economics
-
The Situation of Cheating
21 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pmBehavioral economist Dan Ariely, in the following video, describes one of his fascinating studies on the situation of cheating. For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “The Interior Situation of Honesty (and Dishonesty),” “The Situation of Lying,” “The Facial Obviousness of Lying,” “Cheating Doesn’t Pay . . . So Why So Much of it?,” “Dan Ariely, a Situationist,” “Dan Ariely on Cheating,”and “Unclean Hands.” -
writing for myself
19 Nov 2009 | 1:23 amNo more writing class. The job search is heating up, and I have way too many interesting tasks on my to do list. After a great first few sessions, the energy level in class dropped off - even the instructor seemed to lose interest in us. Fine, I’ll let him return to his poetry. I prefer blogging, frankly – prefer an exploration of ideas that doesn’t need to devolve to the relentless self-flagellation of “memoir.” And some day I’d like to write for The Onion, or Shouts and Murmurs, but I don’t believe that’s a style of writing Stanford… -
The New Interventionist Economics
17 Nov 2009 | 5:39 amby Roger Koppl Two recent posts on this blog (here and here) raise the issue of animal spirits and where macro is headed. I’ve recently completed a draft manuscript saying we are headed for “BRACE” economics. I say the “New Interventionist Economics” will be characterized by five features: Bubbles Radical Uncertainty Animal Spirits Complexity Dynamics Extra-Market Control (giving the BRACE acronym). My paper includes a look at two contributions to the recent conference asking “What’s Wrong with Modern Macroeconomics?” namely, those of Kirman and De Grauwe. The… -
The Situation of the "Invisible Hand"
16 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pmYesterday, Paul Rosenberg published an intriguing situationist piece at Open Left about the context and meaning of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” Here are some excerpts. What if Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” argument doesn’t mean what we think it means? What if it doesn’t mean that everything else but the “free market” can and should be ignored? What if if Smith actually depended on social and historical context in order to make his argument in the first place? What if it was an argument deeply dependent on what . . . The… -
Women aren't Children, but they might sometimes prefer the title.
16 Nov 2009 | 1:57 pmPrak the Sane says, if it looks like a woman and talks like a woman, then we have to at least consider the possibility that we may be dealing with an effeminate member of the homindae family: more selective in mating, generally in constant higher reproductive demand, replete with stronger spatial memory and perhaps consequently better fashion sense. Recently, ozisevolving made a few jabs at the sexism latent in the statement “women and children” here: Women Aren’t Children. The post says that calling women children is not only inaccurate, but condescending and ultimately…
-
TierneyLab
-
How Will Religion Evolve?
19 Nov 2009 | 10:06 amIs some sort of compromise coming in the future of religion? And if so, where? -
Who Should Own the Rosetta Stone?
16 Nov 2009 | 2:57 pmShould the British Museum return the Rosetta Stone to Egypt? Should the export of a nation's "cultural property" be banned? Should there be laws giving national governments ownership of any antiquity unearthed today within their borders? -
Monday Puzzle: Conversion Factors
16 Nov 2009 | 8:37 amIn a last desperate cry, a technician on an Antarctic expedition yelled out a temperature measurement he made as he fell into a crevasse. The number he shouted out was clearly heard, but not the units. It turned out not to make a difference. What was the temperature? -
Thursday Puzzle: What's Wrong (or Right) With This Picture?
12 Nov 2009 | 4:51 amDoes the picture above look natural to you? If you were standing in a lodge at Glacier National Park, is this how a jigsaw puzzle and the scenery would appear to your eye? -
Stars of the Astronomy Quiz
10 Nov 2009 | 3:49 pmWe have a winner -- two winners, actually-- of the prize for the Lab's Beautiful Universe Astronomy Quiz.
-
WordPress Tag: Decision Management
-
Try Again - A Third Grade Lesson for Small Business
18 Nov 2009 | 10:58 amIt is especially important for Small Business Owners, Entrepreneurs to develop an indomitable spirit. This little poem inspires me when I feel like a hampster on a wheel. TRY AGAIN from THE BEACON THIRD READER by James H. Fassett with a copyright dtd: 1914. Drive the nail aright, boys, Hit it on the head; Strike with all your might, boys, While the iron’s red. When you’ve work to do, boys, Do it with a will; They who reach the top, boys, First must climb the hill. Standing at the foot, boys, Gazing at the sky, How can you get up, boys, If you never try? Though you stumble oft,… -
What You Don't Know About Your Competitors May Sink You
10 Nov 2009 | 11:59 pmWhat? According to a study by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, about 90% of the Fortune 500 companies in the US are conducting competitive intelligence activities. A majority of large enterprises, according to another study (about 70%), believe that having competitive intelligence in the past would have increased the effectiveness of their campaigns. Yet, many companies, including some market leaders in the rest of the world, do not have well-defined competitive intelligence plans. They evaluate their strategies and tactics in isolation, without taking into account what… -
Integrated Approach for Entrepreneurs
7 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pmIn the face of continuous technological changes and financial market volatility, it is becoming increasingly important to define business ideas and validate the concept before launching a high technology or eCommerce venture. The Integrated Approach provides the means to entrepreneurs in objectively analyzing their business ideas. It enables them to identify the underlying factors that are critical for the longer-term success of the venture and whether their concept is actually a viable business solution. Additionally, the framework evaluates the allocation of limited resources,… -
The Devil is in the Default Option Details
2 Nov 2009 | 4:52 pmSo I just started reading Nudge, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, and I must say that the book does a remarkable job at articulating how the behaviors behind our everyday choices can be manipulated through understanding the mind traps that we commonly fall into. The initial mind trap that made me take a step back and think, was the idea of how the “default” option is almost always the most popular choice in every multiple choice (but mandatory) selection process. This is because individuals are either too unmotivated to choose something more complex, forget about… -
Are you ready for Success?
25 Oct 2009 | 1:53 pmOf all those who answer the call of entrepreneurship, most fail. But why is that? What is it about some entrepreneurs that make them successful? What is their recipe for success? Before embarking on your journey of self-employment ask yourself the tough question. Do you have what it takes? It is true: only about 30% of startups survive after the five-year mark. Perhaps the two most common reasons for this are that entrepreneurs tend to lack the necessary skills to execute their idea and that they grossly underestimate the capital and resources needed for the startup to be successful.
-
WordPress Tag: Decision Theory
-
Catholic strategy, take 3
13 Nov 2009 | 1:48 amThis is my third post in a series (see previous posts here and here) criticizing the Catholic Church’s strategy regarding gay marriage and abortion. The brief version of the argument goes like this: as a rational actor, the church should view its strategic choices as either 1. go for broke now and push back against the gay marriage tide but also risk becoming irrelevant int he future, or 2. bide your time, keep moderates in the fold, and play long ball. My instinct is that option 2 would be much more fruitful for them, given their goals. The risk is just too high that today’s… -
Nudging
11 Nov 2009 | 10:06 am‘Nudging’ is the buzzword of the year among reformers and policy wonks. A term popularized by Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, a ‘nudge’ is a soft push in the right direction by structuring a choice to make the chooser more likely to opt for the desired outcome. Why go around prohibiting negative behaviors when you can more easily discourage them by giving the individual more information? It’s an elegant solution to the problem of how to tackle large societal problems without infringing on personal freedom of choice. But nudging has its limitations, perhaps… -
The case for viewing churches as political agents
10 Nov 2009 | 9:42 amI’ve had some feedback from yesterday’s post (which looked at how the Catholic Church was pursuing a strategy of vocal social conservatism that was likely to increase the church’s decline in the US). The main criticism I got was that you can’t really expect a church to behave like a political party and pursue a Big Tent strategy in order to grow. The Catholic Church’s moral conservatism isn’t designed to adapt, after all, it’s designed to proclaim the church’s version of the truth no matter the popularity of those principles. As one private… -
Here's is your chance to win an advance copy of my book.
9 Nov 2009 | 7:33 amHi there, I am giving away two advance copies of my new book The Right Decision. How can you get a copy? Simple. See the scenario and poll below? Pick “the right decision” and in the comments section tell me why you think that is the best way to proceed. The first two people to pick “the right decision” and tell me their reason for doing so will get a free copy of the book. Check back on Wednesday for the best answer. Please don’t forget to write a comment as to why you picked a certain answer. I cannot track who won if you don’t comment. Thanks for… -
Should You – and Your Children – Get Flu Shots?
9 Nov 2009 | 6:45 amNot only is this the flu season, but there’s the added stress of the H1N1 swine flu to add to the mix. Normally, we just treat winter as a time when people get more colds than usual, but this year two statistics are being cited: approximately 35,000 people in the United States die every year from complications relating to the flu, and 100 million or so people died during the great Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Half a century ago, when I first started getting vaccinations, if your doctor said to get vaccinated, you got vaccinated. End of story. Nowadays, however, there are some…
-
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
-
Type M errors are all over the place
21 Nov 2009 | 12:09 pmJimmy points me to this article, "Why most discovered true associations are inflated," by J. P. Ioannidis. As Jimmy pointed out, this is exactly what we call type M (for magnitude) errors. I completely agree with Ioannidis's point, which he seems to be making more systematically than David Weakliem and I did in our recent article on the topic. My only suggestion beyond what Ioannidis wrote has to do with potential solutions to the problem. His ideas include: "being cautious about newly discovered effect sizes, considering some rational down-adjustment, using analytical methods that correct… -
Postdoc openings here in fall, 2010 !!!
21 Nov 2009 | 3:52 amPostdoc opportunities working with Prof. Andrew Gelman in the Department of Statistics on problems related to hierarchical modeling and statistical computing, with projects including high-dimensional modeling, missing-data imputation, and parallel computing. Application areas include public opinion and voting, social networks, international development, dendrochronology, and models of cancer and drug abuse. Applicants should have experience with Bayesian methods, a willingness to program, and an interest in learning. Applications will be considered as they arrive. The application consisting… -
"Science revolves around the discovery of new cause-effect relationships but the entire statistics literature says almost nothing about how to do this."
19 Nov 2009 | 8:13 amSeth writes: Is this a fair statement, do you think? Science revolves around the discovery of new cause-effect relationships but the entire statistics literature says almost nothing about how to do this. It's part of an abstract for a talk I [Seth] will give at the ASA conference next July. Haven't submitted the abstract yet so can revise it or leave it out. My reply: This seems reasonable to me. You could clarify that the EDA literature is all about discovery of new relationships but with nothing about causality, while the identification literature is all about causality but nothing about… -
Senators and health care; also a discussion of pretty statistical graphics
19 Nov 2009 | 5:16 amNate, Daniel, and I have an op-ed in the Times today, about senators' positions and state-level opinion on health care. We write: Lawmakers' support for or opposition to reform generally has less to do with the views of their constituents and more to do with the issue of presidential popularity. . . . For instance, Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat who has been a less-than-strong supporter of the present health care bill, recently told The Times, "I am responsible to the people of Arkansas, and that is where I will take my direction." But where does she look for her cue? Hers is a poor… -
Statfight!
19 Nov 2009 | 1:38 amFun stuff.
-
Strategic Thinking
-
US Trade Deficit Widens
13 Nov 2009 | 11:38 amThe Gap Again Widens The September trade numbers are out and America’s Trade deficit increased significantly since August. Not only did it increase, but it made the largest percentage increase since February of 1999. Of course, part of that dramatic note is due to the contraction that resulted as part of the economic down-turn. An AP article (see: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNiyJ905Ho0Ur96V2TQhsBX19lGwD9BUNGF80) sites authorities who suggest that the increase in energy prices is outstripping the benefit gained in the export sector by a falling dollar. As… -
Count Down to START Lapse
12 Nov 2009 | 9:03 amSource: www.kremlin.ru The venerated first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) will expire on December 5, 2009. The importance of this treaty lies not merely in the fact that it reduced the numbers of nuclear warheads and the platforms on which they reside in both the Soviet and US arsenals (later the five weapon holding successor states of the Soviet Union and the US.) Perhaps more important were the unprecedented levels of verification and information exchange incorporated into the Treaty- a codification of President Reagan’s often quoted “trust, but verify”… -
Science, Religion, and the Origins of Conflict
11 Nov 2009 | 12:31 pmI attended the Honeywell-Nobel Laureate Lecture at Georgia Tech a week ago on November 4th 2009. The speaker was Sir Harry Kroto, and he gave a rapidly paced and entertaining talk entitled Science, Society, and Sustainability. The middle portion of this talk, the part dealing with society, dealt to a large degree with the tension between science and religion, and, in particular, his views about intolerance and dogmatism among many religious people. During this section, he raised an interesting question. To paraphrase [hopefully largely in accordance with his intended… -
Korean Naval Skirmish: What’s the Objective?
10 Nov 2009 | 9:12 amRoK Navy Ships Like Those Involved in Skirmish The navies of North and South Korea engaged in a brief, 2-3 minute, skirmish that resulted in the North Korean ship returning to port for repair. The engagement occurred after a North Korean ship apparently ventured across a limit line off the west coast of the peninsula and then failed to heed an extended volley of warning shots. There were no South Korean casualties. There seems to be a widespread belief that the North Koreans engaged in the provocation to send a signal in advance of President Obama’s impending trip to Asia. -
The French – German Nuclear Energy Divide
4 Nov 2009 | 11:29 amWhat explains the diametrically opposed positions on nuclear power witnessed between France and Germany? France is arguably the most pro-nuclear energy country in the world, and Germany, while it may be having second thoughts, has been retiring its aging nuclear plants so as to gradually phase out of the nuclear energy business. These two countries have quite a bit in common in addition to being neighbors. They have similar sized populations and economies. While Germany is a little bigger in terms of both population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the two countries’ per capita…
-
WordPress Tag: Decision Making
-
Powerful Words and Behavior
21 Nov 2009 | 3:56 amHow important are words? Do words have the power to shape our thinking or are they nothing more than a reflection of what our minds are already processing, giving substance to existing abstractions floating in our heads? That is the essence of a debate that has gone on now for more than 100 years. Think for a minute of the words we use to describe numbers, one, two, ten, fifty. Are we naturally inclined to develop words to describe numbers? Do the words themselves, the words that we have made up to signify quantities give us the ability to think both abstractly and concretely about numbers,… -
Measuring what you are Managing – Part 1
21 Nov 2009 | 3:50 amThere are times when rigorous measurement of programs, processes or choices can greatly aid in the decision making process and surveys can be used in that evaluation. For instance, in organizations when the amount of resources that can be brought to bear are limited and difficult decisions need to be made about the deployment of those resources, a measurement process that gives insight into the expected benefits of action A vs. action B can be especially helpful. Consider the following situations: A school system wants to know if the investment it is making in advanced teacher training is… -
Creating Confidence & The Long Island Murder
21 Nov 2009 | 3:40 amOn Long Island, in a neighborhood not all that far from NYC, there was a murder this month. In fact it was not so much of a murder as it was an old style lynching carried out by those with a mob mentality, a gang of high school boys who took sport in torturing their fellow human beings, viewing it as a pleasurable activity. They routinely hunted Latinos, shooting them with BB guns, jumping them and punching them as they drove around. This time, their sport led to the fatal stabbing and the death of an Ecuadorian immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, simply because he was Latino and easy prey. NYC that… -
Hey Einstein, Solve This!
21 Nov 2009 | 3:32 amThe Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm that informed the Industrial Revolution has provided a way for us to order our world, solve problems and realize tremendous benefit. Accordingly our gain in knowledge and associated technological prowess have provided us the ability to develop many different scientific fields, explore the far reaches of outer space, improve medical care—adding years to our life expectancy—and also to destroy the world with a push of a button. These accomplishments have led us to believe that all problems are solvable once reduced to simpler and more controllable parts. -
Change Proofing
21 Nov 2009 | 2:50 amIn 1995 I co-authored a paper [1] about “Change Proofing” – the ability of a commercial organization to manage change stimulated by largely unanticipated, hard-to-predict events and shocks. Examples up to that time included trauma due to third world debt in the 1970s, the energy industry in the 1980s, and commercial real estate and corporate buy-outs in the 1990s. History shows that the consequences of failing to recognize and interpret harbingers of change can be devastating. It is said that the ancient Peruvian Indians were unable to “see” the sails of the invading Spanish…
-
Kevin Hoffberg's Blog
-
Go-to-Market Paper Available Online
21 Nov 2009 | 11:11 amI recently republished a paper I wrote some years ago about the how’s and why’s of tuning up your go-to-market strategy. Here’s the lead on it . . . At some point it occurs to every executive. Maybe it’s a nagging thought in the middle of a meeting or while playing chess with a tough opponent. Maybe it’s a raging impatience. Hopefully it’s a strategic and permanent insight. “It” often sounds like this: “”We’re spending all this time, money, and resource on marketing, sales, fulfillment, information technology, and about forty other things. Tell me… -
Sailing with Pirates: What Was Choice B?
21 Nov 2009 | 10:46 amAlthough piracy continues unabated off the Somali coast, “we the people” have largely moved on to more compelling matters like the Palin book barrage, Lou Dobb’s retirement, and oh yes, Health Care reform. A couple of items did sneak into the popular press in the past week that cause me to wonder “what were the thinking?” The first that comes to mind is the case of a British couple named Chandler. The Chandlers, married for 28 years, took early retirement about three years ago, sailing around the world. In an entry on a Web site in June they wrote that they… -
Beware the Escalation of Commitment Trap
16 Nov 2009 | 8:42 pmI’m always on the lookout for pieces about decision making at work, or better still, great examples of decision traps at work. Richard Thaler writes about one of those traps called “escalation of commitment” in the New York Times when he describes a game that’s sometimes called a dollar auction. I’ve seen it done several ways but a common form is to auction off a $20 bill. It goes like this . . . Bidding starts at $1 and goes up in $1 increments. The winner pays the [auctioneer] whatever the high bid was, and gets the $20. Here’s the catch:… -
Lessons Learned From A Guy Who Made $20 Billion in Two Years
15 Nov 2009 | 2:06 amHere’s a story lead from the WSJ that should get your attention: Even as the financial system collapsed last year, and millions of investors lost billions of dollars, one unlikely investor was racking up historic profits: John Paulson, a hedge-fund manager in New York. His firm made $20 billion between 2007 and early 2009 by betting against the housing market and big financial companies. Mr. Paulson’s personal cut would amount to nearly $4 billion, or more than $10 million a day. That was more than the 2007 earnings of J.K. Rowling, Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods combined. Wow, $20… -
What We Can Learn About Leadership From Conducting
14 Nov 2009 | 4:52 amThis is an absolutely delightful contemplation on leadership through the eyes of a orchestra conductor. Think about the dynamics such a person must master . . . There is the responsibility to the composer, perhaps a minor one, perhaps one like Mozart who takes tea with the Gods. There are the musicians, each of whom have a story to tell, a skill to display, a wellspring from which to draw. How to bring those stories together? How to highlight this one just so? And of course there is you, the conductor, with your story, your experiences, your beliefs about structure,…
-
Nudge blog
-
Default doh!
19 Nov 2009 | 8:24 pmMichigan’s state parks, like Washington’s state parks, are suffering from a budget crunch. The Michigan Senate, like the Washington legislature, wants to replace park entry fees with an annual fee that drivers would pay when they renew their vehicle registrations. The Washington legislature has decided to make paying the fee the default option, while offering drivers the option to opt out. Michigan’s Senate wants to make not paying the fee the default rule, which would likely defeat the whole purpose of using the default rule to fund the parks appropriately. Michigan’s… -
Yea or nay: Vote on a proposed parking lot nudge
18 Nov 2009 | 11:25 amReader Richard Whittington passes along an interesting idea he has for revising parking lot choice architecture. The basic proposal is to narrow the parking spaces closer to store entrances. Whittington explains two benefits. Make parking spaces that are closer to store entrances narrower for the first 20 spaces, then get progressively wider up to the standard width 40 spaces from the entrance. People would park further out from the entrance because it would be harder to exit the vehicle close in and they would not care to have an older banged up vehicle bang up their nice vehicle. It would… -
Confusing choice architecture: Don’t text, but check out our tweets
17 Nov 2009 | 10:58 amTalk about mixed messages. At least 22 states that ban texting while driving offer some type of service that allows motorists to get information about traffic tie-ups, road conditions or emergencies via Twitter. Sadly, the Nudge blog’s home state of Illinois is one of them. Full story here. Posted in Blog posts Tagged: choice architecture, traffic -
Bill Belichick is no bonehead. He just understands probability.
16 Nov 2009 | 1:01 pmWas Bill Belichick’s decision’s to go for a fourth and two conversion at his own 28 with 2 minutes left in the game against the Colts a boneheaded move? There’s already been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking by media talking heads (here, here, here, and here) saying yes. The stat gurus at Advanced NFL Stats say no, prompting this response from a commenter: “Well, he went for it and it didn’t work. Then his team lost a game it was winning by six points with two minutes left. We don’t need any more proof then that to know it was a dumb decision, no matter what any… -
Richard Thaler on Swoopo.com and the rise of the penny auction
15 Nov 2009 | 12:37 pmRichard Thaler’s latest Economic View column ponders the attraction of penny auction sites like Swoopo.com that let people bid for merchandise in one cent increments, while charging them lots of cents for the right to place a bid. In the end, the winner gets a great deal, $20 for a laptop or $15 for an iPod, with the rest of the item’s cost (plus the auction site’s profits) paid for by losing bidders. Consumer electronics aren’t the only items Swoopo has put up for bid. Swoopo has even sold cash using this format — specifically, checks for $1,000. My colleague Emir…
-
Predictably Irrational
-
Religion As a source for research ideas
20 Nov 2009 | 2:02 amDirect my steps by Your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me. Redeem me from the oppression of man, that I may keep Your precepts. Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes. Rivers of water run down from my eyes, because men do no keep Your law. -Psalm 119: 133-136 If you remember from Predictably Irrational, at some point we carried out a cheating study that assessed the value of moral reminders. In the experiment, we asked participants to complete a test, told them they’d receive cash for every correct answer, and made sure they knew they had ample room… -
Sex, Shaving, and Bad Underwear
15 Nov 2009 | 2:09 amSex, Shaving, and Bad Underwear Or how to trick yourself into exerting self-control Recently, I gave a lecture on the problem of self-control. You know the one: At time X you decide that you’re done acting a certain way (No more smoking! No more spending! No more unprotected sex!), but then when temptation strikes, you go back on your word. As I mention in Predictably Irrational, this predicament has to do with our inherent Jekyll-Hyde nature: We just aren’t the same person all the time. In our cold, dispassionate state, we stick to our long-term goals (I will lose ten pounds);… -
An Extreme Take on The Ten Commandments Experiment
10 Nov 2009 | 2:19 amRemember our Ten Commandments cheating study? The one where we asked students to recall the commandments before an exam, and found that this moral reminder deterred them from cheating? Well, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University recently made practical use of the study – but in an extreme way. Fed up with the low ethical standards in his MBA class, Professor Michael Tang passed out an honor pledge that not only listed the Ten Commandments, but also included the concluding flourish that those who cheated would “be sorry for the rest of [their] life and go to Hell.” In… -
Tiny Irrationalities That Add Up: Texting While Driving
5 Nov 2009 | 2:00 amSad story out in the New York Times describing growing concerns about texting while driving. In Britain, a woman was sentenced to a 21-month sentence after it was found that she had been texting while driving, which resulted in the death of a 24-year old design student. In many ways, texting while driving illustrates a case in which tiny, individual irrational decisions can accumulate and cause widespread suffering, not only for the individuals who are texting, but their unsuspecting victims. Unlike cases of drunk driving, in which the driver’s decision making abilities are impaired,… -
The psychology of money and habits
1 Nov 2009 | 2:12 amMoney is an integral part of modern life. We constantly make decisions about whether we’re willing to pay for different products and, if so, how much we are willing to pay. In fact, we make decisions about money so often that we consider money to be a natural part of our environment. However, money is a relatively recent invention, and despite its incredible economic usefulness it does come with its own set of problems. In particular, it turns out that decisions about money are often non-intuitive and, in fact, quite difficult. Consider the following situation as an example: You are…
