By Benjamin Voyer Out of all the areas of public life that can benefit from the applications of behavioural economics (BE) principles, healthcare is probably the one where it can make the biggest societal contribution. There are two main reasons why the healthcare industry should welcome (more!) BE insights. The first reason is that many [...]
By Tom Wein Behaviour depends on context - and conflict is the most extreme context of all. There have been a series of attempts, of varying value, to understand behaviour in that scenario - by academics, governments and NGOs seeking to predict and reduce conflict, and by combatants seeking an advantage. In recent years, [...]
By Diogo Gonçalves Dear son, today I want to talk to you about how people make decisions. Many choices in our lives have uncertain outcomes. Choosing between two alternatives often involves a risk, such as whether you should spend your birthday money on a new bicycle or on a PlayStation. Each choice is like two sides of a coin: there is a [...]
By Guy Champniss I still have vivid memories of when I was little and I started to misbehave, my mother would bend down and whisper something in my ear. Each time, it was the same thing. And each time, it stopped me dead in my tracks. ‘People are watching you’ she’d say. I’d look around [...]
By Eyal Winter Many of us tend to think of decision making as a process in which two separate and opposite mechanisms are engaged in a critical struggle, with the emotional and impulsive mechanism within us tempting us to choose the “wrong” thing, while the rational and intellectual mechanism that we also carry inside us [...]
When it comes to behaviour, politics is never absent, argued Mike Kelly, at a UCL Centre for Behaviour Change seminar on policy and evidence.
The new journal Behavioral Science & Policy just published a PDF of its inaugural issue. You can download it at: http://behavioralpolicy.org/journal/ Here's what the editors have to say about the first issue: This first issue is representative of our vision for BSP. We are pleased to publish an outstanding set of contributions from leading scholars who have [...]
A common interpretation in behavioural finance is that rationality is the result of a pure cognitive process which can be behaviourally biased. While cognitive biases are influences that affect rationality from within the cognitive system, affective biases refer to those influences that affect the cognitive system from outside. Unfortunately, the assumption that rationality is a pure cognitive process is not well motivated. Rationality results from the intrinsic interaction between cognition and emotions.
Richard Thaler amused as much as informed, as he surveyed the intellectual battles behavioural economists have fought, in a talk at the LSE.
On the train from London to Brussels, the passenger sitting next to me suddenly gets agitated. I look at him puzzled, as this is a wagon entirely populated by people traveling for business and sudden noises or exuberant behaviour are noticeable like being dressed in a pink suit. My travel companion apologises and adds:"Damn, I [...]
