Now this is not to say that people shouldn't address their weaknesses or abandon learning basic skills. But it does mean that individuals and our society need to recognize that people have different skills.
Do better-informed poor people demand better government? The evidence is mixed. New research shows widely different results across countries and across services.
It's not your fault that you don't think harder and better. You're not wired for it. Deep thinking requires effort, and no matter how hardworking you think you are, we don't like to expend the effort required to think hard. It's a subconscious thing.
The trick is to develop enough confidence in the models that we are not tempted to manually override them when they contradict our own preciously-held view of the world. This is unfortunately also difficult in practice.
* Persuading delinquent taxpayers to do the right thing * At less cost than enforcement, behavioralists get results By N...
The season for giving is just around the corner. Giving to yourself, that is. Data from the National Federation of Retailers show a trend of “sel...
By combining our own proprietary research with a broad range of emerging work from academia, we have reached a simple, but eye-opening conclusion for marketers: it's not brands that make people feel good, but their decision to choose them that makes them feel good.
The world is full of strange behavior. It is natural to theorize this is due to irrational biases. But often apparently strange behavior is the right solution to a complex problem.
Why do people keep toiling long beyond when they have to? Of course, the lucky ones do it because they love their work, and others want to bequeath something to their kids or hedge against misfortune. But what about those who lack these motivations but earn too much money anyway?
Resist the urge to spend 99 cents on iTunes for a game and digitally toss that change into your piggy bank instead. That's the big idea behind one new...
The rich are more likely to: a) Cut off other drivers. b) Be disinterested in the welfare of others. c) Cheat on a test to get ahead. d) Give m...
In comparing Allais' two counterintuitive observations -- that pendulums behave oddly during eclipses and that human beings behave oddly when making decisions involving uncertainties -- I can't help feeling the former is much more important than the latter.
Apparently, sadness has the effect of bringing to mind "take the money and run" rationalizations, rapidly and elaborately, which can lead to lousy judgments and real financial losses.
Since trust and cooperation are so essential to the smooth working of human society, it makes sense that people would have learned over eons both to send signals of trustworthiness and to interpret signs of malicious intent.
Just because legislating immunization coverage works in the United States doesn't mean it will work in Pakistan. The main reason is that the drivers of under-vaccination in Pakistan and the United States are fundamentally different.
Making meaning is a fundamental brain addiction with a pesky non-discerning quality to it that makes it tough to know when it is serving you and when it isn't. To me this is the only rule one needs to remember.
There is little doubt that multichannel commerce is being reborn. The traditional ways of describing multichannel commerce no longer work because cust...
Rational expectations captures the uncertainty principle in economics: your behavior depends on the theories you believe.
Much is made of the inability to forecast the current crisis of economics; others say that it arises from the assumption of "rational expectations." On the contrary: it is a fundamental principle that there can be no reliable way of predicting a crisis.
Ask people how fattening those organic chocolate-covered peanuts are, and they'll guess a lower number than they did for the non-organic version. They'll also eat more than they would have otherwise. The same goes for "low-fat" products.
When we start to think of politics as a market-driven activity, and political parties as products we choose to "buy" with our votes, the U.S. system starts to show some basic econometric flaws.
If you are trying to create an environment in which people are going to cooperate, you are probably better off fostering an environment of team unity and trust than you are focusing on the gender balance of the group.
Are hard-edged smoking cessation or weight loss programs justified because they help keep down everyone's insurance costs? What is the balance between personal freedom and societal obligations?
Here's the classic economic view of your car-purchasing behavior: You walk into a dealership, choose a car based on brand, color, cylinders, looks and general feel and then start comparing prices among different options.
We're hard-wired to have a physiological response to the actions observed in others, but are our psychological states mirrored in the outside world, as well?
