Action bias
Some core ideas in behavioral economics focus on people’s propensity to do nothing, as evident in default bias and status quo bias. Inaction may be due to a number of factors, including inertia or anticipated regret. However, sometimes people have an impulse to act in order to gain a sense of control over a situation and eliminate...
Affect heuristic
The affect heuristic represents a reliance on good or bad feelings experienced in relation to a stimulus. Affect-based evaluations are quick, automatic, and rooted in experiential thought that is activated prior to reflective judgments (see dual-system theory) (Slovic et al., 2002). For example, experiential judgments are evident when people are influenced by risks framed in...
Altruism
According to neoclassical economics, rational beings do whatever they need to in order to maximize their own wealth. However, when people make sacrifices to benefit others without expecting a personal reward, they are thought to behave altruistically (Rushton, 1984). Common applications of this pro-social behavior include volunteering, philanthropy, and helping others in emergencies (Piliavin &...
Ambiguity (uncertainty) aversion
Ambiguity aversion, or uncertainty aversion, is the tendency to favor the known over the unknown, including known risks over unknown risks. For example, when choosing between two bets, we are more likely to choose the bet for which we know the odds, even if the odds are poor, than the one for which we don’t...
Anchoring (heuristic)
Anchoring is a particular form of priming effect whereby initial exposure to a number serves as a reference point and influences subsequent judgments. The process usually occurs without our awareness (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) and has been researched in many contexts, including probability estimates, legal judgments, forecasting and purchasing decisions (Furnham & Boo, 2011). One...
Availability heuristic
Availability is a heuristic whereby people make judgments about the likelihood of an event based on how easily an example, instance, or case comes to mind. For example, investors may judge the quality of an investment based on information that was recently in the news, ignoring other relevant facts (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). In the...
Behavioral economics
The field of behavioral economics studies and describes economic decision-making. According to its theories, actual human behavior is less rational, stable, and selfish than traditional normative theory suggests (see also homo economicus), due to bounded rationality, limited self-control, and social preferences. To find out more about behavioral economics, please download the Behavioral Economics Guide, read our Introduction...
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is a concept proposed by Herbert Simon that challenges the notion of human rationality as implied by the concept of homo economicus. Rationality is bounded because there are limits to our thinking capacity, available information, and time (Simon, 1982). Bounded rationality a core assumption of the “natural assessments” view of heuristics and dual-system...
(Economic) Bubble
Economic (or asset) bubbles form when prices are driven much higher than their intrinsic value (see also efficient market hypothesis). Well-known examples of bubbles include the US Dot-com stock market bubble of the late 1990s and housing bubble of the mid-2000s. According to Robert Shiller (2015), who warned of both of these events, speculative bubbles...
Certainty/possibility effects
Changes in the probability of gains or losses do not affect people’s subjective evaluations in linear terms (see also prospect theory and zero price effect) (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). For example, a move from a 50% to a 60% chance of winning a prize has a smaller emotional impact than a move from a 95%...
Choice architecture
This term coined by Thaler and Sunstein (2008) refers to the practice of influencing choice by “organizing the context in which people make decisions” (Thaler et al., 2013, p. 428; see also nudge). A frequently mentioned example is how food is displayed in cafeterias, where offering healthy food at the beginning of the line or...
Choice overload
Also referred to as ‘overchoice’, the phenomenon of choice overload occurs as a result of too many choices being available to consumers. Overchoice has been associated with unhappiness (Schwartz, 2004), decision fatigue, going with the default option, as well as choice deferral—avoiding making a decision altogether, such as not buying a product (Iyengar & Lepper,...
Chunking
When the same information is presented in a different form that is easier to process, our ability to receive and remember it is greater. People often reorganize, regroup or compress information to aid in its understanding or recall. The resulting subgroups are ‘chunks’, which can be defined as a set of information or items that...
Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias (e.g. Ariely, 2008) is a systematic (non-random) error in thinking, in the sense that a judgment deviates from what would be considered desirable from the perspective of accepted norms or correct in terms of formal logic. The application of heuristics is often associated with cognitive biases. Some biases, such as those arising...
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance, an important concept in social psychology (Festinger, 1957), refers to the uncomfortable tension that can exist between two simultaneous and conflicting ideas or feelings—often as a person realizes that s/he has engaged in a behavior inconsistent with the type of person s/he would like to be, or be seen publicly to be. According...
Commitment
Commitments (see also precommitment) are often used as a tool to counteract people’s lack of willpower and to achieve behavior change, such as in the areas of dieting or saving. The greater the cost of breaking a commitment, the more effective it is (Dolan et al., 2010). From the perspective of social psychology, individuals are...
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias (Wason, 1960) occurs when people seek out or evaluate information in a way that fits with their existing thinking and preconceptions. The domain of science, where theories should advance based on both falsifying and supporting evidence, has not been immune to bias, which is often associated with people processing hypotheses in ways that...
Control premium
In behavioral economics, the control premium refers to people’s willingness to forego potential rewards in order to control (avoid delegation) of their own payoffs. In an experiment, participants were asked to choose whether to bet on another person or themselves answering a quiz question correctly. Although individuals’ maximizing their rewards would bet on themselves in...
Decision fatigue
There are psychological costs to making decisions. Since choosing can be difficult and requires effort like any other activity, long sessions of decision making can lead to poor choices. Similar to other activities that consume resources required for executive functions, decision fatigue is reflected in self-regulation, such as a diminished ability to exercise self-control (Vohs...
Decision staging
When people make complex or long decisions, such as buying a car, they tend to successively explore their options. This includes what information to focus on, as well as choices between attributes and alternatives. For example, when people narrow down their options, they often tend to screen alternatives on the basis of a subset of...
Decoy effect
Choices often occur relative to what is on offer rather than based on absolute preferences. The decoy effect is technically known as an ‘asymmetrically dominated choice’ and occurs when people’s preference for one option over another changes as a result of adding a third (similar but less attractive) option. For example, people are more likely...
Disposition effect
The disposition effect refers to investors’ reluctance to sell assets that have lost value and greater likelihood of selling assets that have made gains (Shefrin & Statman, 1985). This phenomenon can be explained by prospect theory (loss aversion), regret avoidance and mental accounting. Learn More More about the disposition effect on this website. Find the...
Diversification bias
People seek more variety when they choose multiple items for future consumption simultaneously than when they make choices sequentially, i.e. on an ‘in the moment’ basis. Diversification is non-optimal when people overestimate their need for diversity (Read & Loewenstein, 1995). In other words, sequential choices lead to greater experienced utility. For example, before going on...
Dual-self model
In economics, dual-self models deal with the inconsistency between the patient long-run self and myopic short-run self. With respect to savings behavior, Thaler and Shefrin (1981) introduced the concepts of the farsighted planner and myopic doer. At any point in time, there is a conflict between those selves with two sets of preferences. The approach...
Dual process theory
Dual process models of the human mind contrast automatic, fast, and non-conscious (System 1) with controlled, slow, and conscious (System 2) thinking (see Strack & Deutsch, 2015, for an extensive review). Many heuristics and cognitive biases studied by behavioral economists are the result of intuitions, impressions, or automatic thoughts generated by System 1 (Kahneman, 2011)....
Efficient market hypothesis
According to the efficient market hypothesis, the price (market value) of a security reflects its true worth (intrinsic value). In a market with perfectly rational agents, “prices are right”. Findings in behavioral finance, by contrast, suggests that asset prices also reflect the trading behavior of individuals who are not fully rational (Barberis & Thaler, 2003),...
Ego depletion
Ego depletion is a concept from self-regulation (or self-control) theory in psychology. According to the theory, which has come under heavy scrutiny, willpower operates like a muscle that can be exerted. Studies have found that tasks requiring self-control can weaken this muscle, leading to ego depletion and a subsequently diminished ability to exercise self-control. In...
Elimination-by-aspects
Decision makers have a variety of heuristics at their disposal when they make choices. One of these effort-reducing heuristics is referred to as elimination-by-aspects. When it is applied, decision makers gradually reduce the number of alternatives in a choice set, starting with the most important one. One cue is evaluated at a time until fewer...
(Hot-cold) Empathy gap
It is difficult for humans to predict how they will behave in the future. A hot-cold empathy gap occurs when people underestimate the influence of visceral states (e.g. being angry, in pain, or hungry) on their behavior or preferences (Loewenstein, 2005). In medical decision making, for example, a hot-to-cold empathy gap may lead to undesirable...
Endowment effect
This bias occurs when we overvalue something that we own, regardless of its objective market value (Kahneman et al., 1991). It is evident when people become relatively reluctant to part with a good they own for its cash equivalent, or if the amount that people are willing to pay for the good is lower than...
Fairness
In behavioral science, fairness refers to our social preference for equitable outcomes. This can present itself as inequity aversion, people’s tendency to dislike unequal payoffs in their own or someone else’s favor. The tendency has been documented through experimental games, such as the ultimatum, dictator, and trust games (Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). A large part...
Fast and frugal
Fast and frugal decision-making refers to the application of ecologically rational heuristics, such as the recognition heuristic, which are rooted in the psychological capacities that we have evolved as human animals (e.g. memory and perceptual systems). They are ‘fast and frugal’ because they are effective under conditions of bounded rationality—when knowledge, time, and computational power...
Framing effect
Choices can be presented in a way that highlights the positive or negative aspects of the same decision, leading to changes in their relative attractiveness. This technique was part of Tversky and Kahneman’s development of prospect theory, which framed gambles in terms of losses or gains (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Different types of framing approaches...
Gambler’s fallacy
The term gambler's fallacy refers to the mistaken belief held by some people that independent events are interrelated. For example, a roulette or lottery player may not choose to bet on a number that came up in the previous round. Even though people are usually aware that successive draws of numbers are unrelated, their gut...
(Behavioral) Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical approach to modeling behavior by analyzing the strategic decisions made by interacting players. Game theory in standard experimental economics operates under the assumption of homo economicus – a self-interested, rational maximizer. Behavioral game theory extends standard (analytical) game theory by taking into account how players feel about the payoffs other...
Habit
Habit is an automatic and rigid pattern of behavior in specific situations, which is usually acquired through repetition and develops through associative learning (see also System 1 in dual-system theory), when actions become paired repeatedly with a context or an event (Dolan et al., 2010). ‘Habit loops’ involve a cue that triggers an action, the...
Halo effect
This concept has been developed in social psychology and refers to the finding that a global evaluation of a person sometimes influences people’s perception of that person’s other unrelated attributes. For example, a friendly person may be considered to have a nice physical appearance, whereas a cold person may be evaluated as less appealing (Nisbett...
Hedonic adaptation
People get used to changes in life experiences, a process which is referred to as ‘hedonic adaptation’ or the ‘hedonic treadmill’. Just as the happiness that comes with the ownership of a new gadget or salary raise will wane over time, even the negative effect of life events such as bereavement or disability on subjective...
Herd behavior
This effect is evident when people do what others are doing instead of using their own information or making independent decisions. The idea of herding has a long history in philosophy and crowd psychology. It is particularly relevant in the domain of finance, where it has been discussed in relation to the collective irrationality of...
Heuristic
Heuristics are commonly defined as cognitive shortcuts or rules of thumb that simplify decisions, especially under conditions of uncertainty. They represent a process of substituting a difficult question with an easier one (Kahneman, 2003). Heuristics can also lead to cognitive biases. There are disagreements regarding heuristics with respect to bias and rationality. In the fast...
Hindsight bias
This bias, also referred to as the ‘knew-it-all-along effect’, is a frequently encountered judgment bias that is partly rooted in availability and representativeness heuristics. It happens when being given new information changes our recollection from an original thought to something different (Mazzoni & Vannucci, 2007). This bias can lead to distorted judgments about the probability...
Homo economicus
The term homo economicus, or ‘economic man’, denotes a view of humans in the social sciences, particularly economics, as self-interested agents who seek optimal, utility-maximizing outcomes. Behavioral economists and most psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists are critical of the concept. People are not always self-interested (see social preferences), nor are they mainly concerned about maximizing benefits...
Honesty
Honesty is an important part of our everyday life. In both business and our private lives, relationships are made and broken based on our trust in the other party’s honesty and reciprocity. A 2016 study investigated honesty, beliefs about honesty and economic growth in 15 countries and revealed large cross-national differences. Results showed that average...
Identity economics
Identity economics suggests that we make economic decisions based on monetary incentives and our identity. A person’s sense of self or identity affects economic outcomes. This was outlined in Akerlof and Kranton’s (2000) seminal paper which expanded the standard utility function to include pecuniary payoffs and identity economics in a simple game-theoretic model of behavior,...
IKEA effect
While the endowment effect suggests that mere ownership of a product increases its value to individuals, the IKEA effect is evident when invested labor leads to inflated product valuation (Norton et al., 2012). For example, experiments show that the monetary value assigned to the amateur creations of self-made goods is on a par with the...
Illusion of control
While it’s beneficial to feel in control, excessive control beliefs may have the opposite effect. When people expect to affect uncontrollable events they are said to suffer from an illusion of control. Their belief in personal influence is inappropriately high (Yarritu et al., 2014). Consider an experiment where a subject and a research confederate draw...
Incentives
An incentive is something that motivates an individual to perform an action. It is therefore essential to the study of any economic activity. Incentives, whether they are intrinsic or extrinsic (traditional), can be effective in encouraging behavior change, such as ceasing to smoke, doing more exercise, complying with tax laws or increasing public good contributions....
Inequity aversion
Human resistance to inequitable outcomes is known as ‘inequity aversion’, which occurs when people prefer fairness and resist inequalities (Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). In some instances, inequity aversion is disadvantageous, as people are willing to forego a gain in order to prevent another person from receiving a superior reward. Inequity aversion has been studied through...
(Decision) inertia
In behavioral economics, decision inertia is the endurance of a stable state associated with inaction and the concept of status quo bias (Madrian & Shea 2001). Behavioral nudges can either work with people’s inertia (e.g. by setting defaults) or against it (e.g. by giving warnings)(Jung, 2019). In social psychology, the term inertia is sometimes also...
Information avoidance
Information avoidance in behavioral economics (Golman et al., 2017) refers to situations in which people choose not to obtain knowledge that is freely available. Active information avoidance includes physical avoidance, inattention, the biased interpretation of information (see also confirmation bias) and even some forms of forgetting. In behavioral finance, for example, research has shown that...
Intertemporal choice
Intertemporal choice is an area of research concerned with the relative value people assign to payoffs at different points in time. It generally finds that people are biased towards the present (see present bias) and tend to discount the future (see time discounting).
Less-is-better effect
When objects are evaluated separately rather than jointly, decision makers focus less on attributes that are important and are influenced more by attributes that are easy to evaluate. The less-is-better effect suggests a preference reversal when objects are considered together instead of separately. One study presented participants with two dinner set options. Option A included...
Licensing effect
Also known as ‘self-licensing’ or ‘moral licensing’, the licensing effect is evident when people allow themselves to do something bad (e.g. immoral) after doing something good (e.g. moral) first (Merritt et al., 2010). The effect of licencing has been studied for different behavioral outcomes, including donations, cooperation, racial discrimination, and cheating (Blanken et al., 2015)....
Loss aversion
Loss aversion is an important concept associated with prospect theory and is encapsulated in the expression “losses loom larger than gains” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). It is thought that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. People are more willing to take risks (or behave dishonestly; e.g....
Mental accounting
Mental accounting is a concept associated with the work of Richard Thaler (see Thaler, 2015, for a summary). According to Thaler, people think of value in relative rather than absolute terms. They derive pleasure not just from an object’s value, but also the quality of the deal – its transaction utility (Thaler, 1985). In addition,...
Mindless eating
The expression "mindless eating" has been coined by the eating behavior expert Brian Wansink. It refers to the finding that various cues associated with food non-consciously affect the amount and quality of people's consumption. Cues often serve as benchmarks in the environment. Cues may include serving containers, packaging, people, labels and atmospheric factors. They suggest...
Myopic loss aversion
Myopic loss aversion occurs when investors take a view of their investments that is strongly focused on the short term, leading them to react too negatively to recent losses, which may be at the expense of long-term benefits (Thaler et al., 1997). This phenomenon is influenced by narrow framing, which is the result of investors...
Naive allocation
Decision researchers have found that people prefer to spread limited resources evenly across a set of possibilities. This can be referred as naive allocation. For example, consumers may invest equal amounts of money across different investment options. Similarly, the diversification bias shows that consumers like to spread out consumption choices across a variety of goods....
Need for cognition
When we make decisions, we tend to rely on varying degrees of reflective thought, which is sometimes referred to as System 2 thinking. People with a high Need for Cognition (NC) have a disposition to favor System 2. They are motivated to put effort into their thinking because they enjoy being cognitively challenged (Cacioppo &...
Nudge
According to Thaler and Sunstein (2008, p. 6), a nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting...
Optimism bias
People tend to overestimate the probability of positive events and underestimate the probability of negative events happening to them in the future (Sharot, 2011). For example, we may underestimate our risk of getting cancer and overestimate our future success on the job market. A number of factors can explain unrealistic optimism, including perceived control and...
Overconfidence (effect)
The overconfidence effect is observed when people’s subjective confidence in their own ability is greater than their objective (actual) performance (Pallier et al., 2002). It is frequently measured by having experimental participants answer general knowledge test questions. They are then asked to rate how confident they are in their answers on a scale. Overconfidence is...
Overjustification effect
This effect occurs when a person's intrinsic interest in a previously unrewarded activity is decreased as a result of engaging in that activity as a means to an extrinsic goal (e.g., financial reward) (Deci et al., 1999). Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the...
Partitioning
The rate of consumption can be decreased by physically partitioning resources into smaller units, for example cookies wrapped individually or money divided into several envelopes. When a resource is divided into smaller units (e.g. several packs of chips), consumers encounter additional decision points—a psychological hurdle encouraging them to stop and think. In addition to the...
Peak-end rule
According to the peak-end rule, our memory of past experience (pleasant or unpleasant) does not correspond to an average level of positive or negative feelings but to the most extreme point and the end of the episode (Kahneman, 2000b). The rule developed from the finding that evaluations of a past episode seem to be determined...
Precommitment
Humans need a continuous and consistent self-image (Cialdini, 2008). In an effort to align future behavior, being consistent is best achieved by making a commitment. Thus, precommitting to a goal is one of the most frequently applied behavioral devices to achieve positive change. Committing to a specific future action (e.g. staying healthy by going to...
Preference
In economics, preferences are evident in theoretically optimal choices or real (behavioral) choices when people decide between alternatives. Preferences also imply an ordering of different options in terms of expected levels of happiness, gratification, utility, etc. (Arrow, 1958). Preferences are sometimes elicited in survey research, which may be associated with a range of problems, such...
Preference reversal
Preference reversal (Lichtenstein & Slovic, 1973) refers to a change in the relative frequency by which one option is favored over another in behavioral experiments, as evident in the less-is-better-effect or ratio bias, for example, or framing effects more generally. Preference reversals contradict the predictions of rational choice. References Lichtenstein, S., & Slovic, P. (1973)....
Present bias
The present bias refers to the tendency of people to give stronger weight to payoffs that are closer to the present time when considering trade-offs between two future moments (O’Donoghue & Rabin, 1999). For example, a present-biased person might prefer to receive ten dollars today over receiving fifteen dollars tomorrow, but wouldn’t mind waiting an...
Priming (Conceptual)
Conceptual priming is a technique and process applied in psychology that engages people in a task or exposes them to stimuli. The prime consists of meanings (e.g. words) that activate associated memories (schema, stereotypes, attitudes, etc.). This process may then influence people’s performance on a subsequent task (Tulving et al., 1982). For example, one study...
(Myopic) Procrastination
People often put off decisions, which may be due to self-control problems (leading to present bias), inertia, or the complexity of decision making (see choice overload). Various nudge tools, such as precommitment, can be used to help individuals overcome procrastination. Choice architects can also help by providing a limited time window for action (see scarcity)...
Projection bias
In behavioral economics, projection bias refers to people’s assumption that their tastes or preferences will remain the same over time (Loewenstein et al., 2003). Both transient preferences in the short-term (e.g. due to hunger or weather conditions) and long-term changes in tastes can lead to this bias. For example, people may overestimate the positive impact...
Prospect theory
Prospect theory is a behavioral model that shows how people decide between alternatives that involve risk and uncertainty (e.g. % likelihood of gains or losses). It demonstrates that people think in terms of expected utility relative to a reference point (e.g. current wealth) rather than absolute outcomes. Prospect theory was developed by framing risky choices...
Ratio bias
The concept of ratio bias is rooted in our difficulties in dealing with proportions or ratios as opposed to absolute numbers. For example, when asked to evaluate two movie rental plans with a contracted scale (e.g. 7 and 9 new movies per week for Plans A and B, respectively) as opposed to an equivalent offering...
Reciprocity
Reciprocity is a social norm that involves in-kind exchanges between people—responding to another’s action with another equivalent action. It is usually positive (e.g. returning a favor), but it can also be negative (e.g. punishing a negative action) (Fehr & Gächter, 2000). Reciprocity is an interesting concept from the perspective of behavioral economics, because it does...
Recognition heuristic
While a core heuristic in the heuristics and biases tradition of Tversky and Kahneman is availability a similar heuristic proposed in Gigerenzer's fast and frugal tradition is recognition. In the fast and frugal view, the application of heuristics is an “ecologically rational” strategy that makes best use of the limited information available to individuals. (Goldstein...
Reference dependence
Reference dependence is one of the fundamental principles of prospect theory and behavioral economics more generally. In prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), people evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point, and then classify gains and losses (see also loss aversion, endowment effect). Reference dependence can apply to any decision involving risk and uncertainty. Online...
Regret aversion
When people fear that their decision will turn out to be wrong in hindsight, they exhibit regret aversion. Regret-averse people may fear the consequences of both errors of omission (e.g. not buying the right investment property) and commission (e.g. buying the wrong investment property) (Seiler et al., 2008). The effect of anticipated regret is particularly...
Regulatory focus theory
The psychological theory of regulatory focus (Florack et al., 2013; Higgins, 1998) holds that human motivation is rooted in the approach of pleasure and the avoidance of pain and differentiates a promotion focus from a prevention focus. The former involves the pursuit of goals that are achievement- or advancement-related, characterized by eagerness, whereas the latter...
Representativeness heuristic
Representativeness is one of the major general purpose heuristics, along with availability and affect. It is used when we judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class B by looking at the degree to which A resembles B. When we do this, we neglect information about the general probability of B...
Risk-as-feelings
‘Consequentialist’ perspectives of decision making under risk or uncertainty (risky-choice theories, see e.g. prospect theory) tend to either focus on cognitive factors alone or consider emotions as an anticipated outcome of a decision. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis (Loewenstein et al., 2001), on the other hand, also includes emotions as an anticipatory factor, namely feelings at the...
Risk aversion/tolerance
Risk tolerance is often viewed as the core of risk preferences, which (along with time preferences and social preferences) are one of the cornerstones of preferences measured by behavioral economists (Falk et al., 2023). Risk tolerance shows how much uncertainty an individual is willing to accept to achieve a desired outcome, such as a potential...
Satisficing
According to Herbert Simon, people tend to make decisions by satisficing (a combination of sufficing and satisfying) rather than optimizing (Simon, 1956). Decisions are often simply good enough in light of the costs and constraints involved. As a heuristic, satisficing individuals will choose options that meet basic decision criteria. A focus on satisficing can be...
Scarcity (heuristic)
When an object or resource is less readily available (e.g, due to limited quantity or time), we tend to perceive it as more valuable (Cialdini, 2008). Scarcity appeals are often used in marketing to induce purchases. Marketing messages with limited quantity appeals are thought to be more effective than limited time appeals, because they create...
Scarcity (psychology of)
People have a “mental bandwidth,” or brainpower, made up of attention, cognition, and self-control (Mullainathan & Sharif, 2013), which consists of finite resources that may become reduced or depleted. The scarcity mindset entails a feeling of not having enough of something. According to Mullainathan and Sharif, anyone can experience cognitive scarcity, but it is particularly...
Self-control
Self-control, in psychology, is a cognitive process that serves to restrain certain behaviors and emotions vis-a-vis temptations and impulses. This aspect of self-regulation allows individuals to achieve goals (Diamond, 2013). (See also intertemporal choice, present bias, dual-self model, dual-system theory, ego depletion, and decision fatigue.) Learn More More about self-control on this website. Find the...
Serial-position effect
The serial-position effect refers to the finding that items (e.g. word, picture or action) that are located either at the beginning (primacy effect) or end (recency effect) of a list are more easily remembered (Ebbinghaus, 1913). These effects have also been extensively studied in social psychology. Research on persuasion, for example, has found primacy effects...
Sludge
The two defining characteristics of a sludge (Thaler, 2018) are “friction and bad intentions” (Goldhill, 2019). While Richard Thaler strongly advocates nudging for good by making desirable behavior easier, a sludge does the opposite: It makes a process more difficult in order to arrive at an outcome that is not in the best interest of...
Status quo bias
Status quo bias is evident when people prefer things to stay the same by doing nothing (see also inertia) or by sticking with a decision made previously (Samuelson, & Zeckhauser, 1988). This may happen even when only small transition costs are involved and the importance of the decision is great. Field data from university health...
Sunk cost fallacy
Individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort) (Arkes & Blumer, 1985). This fallacy, which is related to loss aversion and status quo bias, can also be viewed as bias resulting from an ongoing commitment. For example, individuals sometimes order...
Take-the-best (heuristic)
Take-the-best is a simple decision-making shortcut that people may apply when choosing between alternatives. It is a one-reason decision rule, a type of heuristic where judgments are based on a single “good” reason only, ignoring other cues (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). Using the take-the-best heuristic, a decision maker will base the choice on one attribute...
Time (temporal) discounting
Time discounting research investigates differences in the relative valuation placed on rewards (usually money or goods) at different points in time by comparing its valuation at an earlier date with one for a later date (Frederick et al., 2002). Evidence shows that present rewards are weighted more heavily than future ones. Once rewards are very...
Trust
Trust pervades human societies. It is indispensable in friendships, love, family, organizations and politics. Interpersonal trust is a mental construct with implications for social functioning and economic behavior as studied by trust games, for example. Although neoclassical economic theory suggests that trust in strangers is irrational, trust and trustworthiness can be widely observed across societies....
Utility
In economics, utility (e.g. Stigler, 1950) refers to the benefits (satisfaction or happiness) consumers derive from a good, and it can be measured based on individuals’ choices between alternatives or preferences revealed in their willingness to pay. Behavioral economists have questioned past assumptions that utility is always maximized, and they have worked with both traditional...
Zero price effect
The zero price effect suggests that traditional cost-benefits models cannot account for the psychological effect of getting something for free. A linear model assumes that changes in cost are the same at all price levels and benefits stay the same. As a result, a decrease in price will make a good equally more or less...