bias

How to Not Get Nudged

Nudging and manipulation in modern society, driven by advancements in technology and behavioral sciences, are pervasive. However, there are ways for individuals to resist and develop immunity to these persuasion tactics. By being forewarned, recognizing manipulation attempts, and undergoing debiasing interventions, individuals can better protect themselves. Additionally, they can avoid vulnerable moments, utilize avoidant resistance, and listen to their intuition. While escaping all influences is impossible, individuals can still choose their influencers and free their minds from undue manipulation.

Do Androids Dream About Biased Judges?

A potentially valuable feature of AI applied in the legal field is identifying insightful patterns of how specific courts and judges operate that elude human cognition. However, we should never forget that the relationship between humans and algorithms is always reflexive, and we can easily corrupt our quantitative-based prediction algorithms with biases.

By |2023-04-05T02:02:19+00:00April 4th, 2023|Categories: Government & Civic Behavior, Technology & Digital|Tags: , , , , , , , |

The Behavioral Economics of Price-Setting

Prospect theory proposes that when making decisions people use a reference point to frame prospective alternative outcomes as either potential gains or losses; when considering prospective gains, they are risk-averse and prefer certainty, but when considering prospective losses, they are risk-prone and prefer to risk the possibility of larger but uncertain losses. However, when setting prices people make decisions that contradict prospect theory: they are risk prone when cutting prices with the prospect of revenue gains, and risk averse when raising prices that they associate with perceived revenue losses.

Anchors Aweigh! How Early Perceptual Information Biases Subsequent Judgments

Anchoring and adjustment, a ubiquitous heuristic process in judgment and decision making, has been vastly demonstrated in the numerical domain. With the help of four studies, we demonstrate the anchoring and adjustment bias in perceptual domains. Additionally, we outline a process of perceptual anchoring and provide a way for a potential resolution to the disagreement among different process accounts for the anchoring phenomenon.

By |2022-02-17T05:30:57+00:00March 9th, 2021|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights|Tags: , , , , |

Biased by Design? Motivated Reasoning by Politicians vs. the Public

Governments around the world proclaim their interest in evidence-based policymaking. However, before evidence can affect policies, it needs to be used by human decision-makers. New research shows that politicians, like their voters, are subject to psychological biases, leading them to misinterpret policy information if it challenges their existing attitudes and beliefs. Moreover, they are more resistant to efforts to reduce those biases, and more likely to double down on their political beliefs even when at odds with the evidence at hand.

Why We Know so Little About Culture and Decision-Making

There is a lot of evidence on the variation of human experience and that economic, social and linguistic environments strongly shape people’s behaviour, motivations and preferences. Despite this, these topics have not received a lot of attention in decision making psychology. In this article, I shed some light on the background of why this is the case.

Does “Irrationality” Travel?

As the enthusiasm for applied behavioural science spreads across the globe, it is time to think how well "irrationality" travels. This is the start of an article series exploring the impact of factors such as cultural context on decision making - and how our understanding of the human mind is based on a thin slice of humanity.

Why We Use Less Information Than We Think to Make Decisions

How much information do you need to make up your mind? Our research in various domains of decision making shows that we make decisions more quickly and based on less information than we think. This has important implications in an age in which information is plentiful.

Nudges in Personal Finance: The Case of Overdrafts

Unarranged overdrafts are financial products which help personal current account holders deal with outstanding balances or declined payments. However, consumers have the tendency to use these products too often, underestimating their negative financial consequences. Concerned by their financial well-being, the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom has begun to address the issue through the application of nudges.

Retirement Planning, Psychology, and Behavioral Economics

Planning our retirement is an endeavour we need to undertake sooner or later. A well thought-out pension plan must be able to ensure our well-being during a long period of professional inactivity. However, a striking finding is that people do not save enough for their retirement. They have difficulties to design a retirement plan tailored to their needs and end up with an insufficient pension income and an impoverished lifestyle. Behavioural economics has pointed out some of the problems that affect retirement planning.

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