decision making

Different Dinners: Unlocking Behavioural Insights for a Sustainable Food Future
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Different Dinners: Unlocking Behavioural Insights for a Sustainable Food Future

Environment, Energy & Transportation

Different Dinners: Unlocking Behavioural Insights for a Sustainable Food Future

In 2022, Auckland Council undertook an innovative research project utilising behavioural insights, which was designed to support Auckland households to make more sustainable and climate friendly food choices, i.e., to eat less meat. This ‘Different Dinners’ project is part of a broader programme of work looking at how Auckland Council can respond to its commitments to address climate change. The results were positive and demonstrate that Aucklanders are both willing to and did make changes to their diets. All interventions tested resulted in increased climate-friendly food choices.

By Rebecca Hayden|2024-08-20T01:13:08+00:00April 2nd, 2024|Categories: Environment, Energy & Transportation|Tags: applied behavioral science, applied behavioural science, behavior change, behavioral economics, behavioral interventions, behavioral science, climate change, decision making, vegetarian|

How to Not Get Nudged
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How to Not Get Nudged

Behavioral Theory & Insights, Society & Everyday Life, Technology & Digital

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.

By Patrick Fagan|2023-08-08T08:51:16+00:00August 7th, 2023|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Society & Everyday Life, Technology & Digital|Tags: behavioral science, bias, decision making, nudge, nudging, persuasion|

The ChatGPT Effect: How Will Our Skillset Evolve in the Age of AI?
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The ChatGPT Effect: How Will Our Skillset Evolve in the Age of AI?

Technology & Digital, Work & Employment

The ChatGPT Effect: How Will Our Skillset Evolve in the Age of AI?

In the digital age, technology has made life more convenient but has also led to the outsourcing of essential skills. The rise of ChatGPT, an AI language model, which offers multiple incredible abilities including enhanced writing abilities, raises the concern that it may diminish our ability to express ourselves properly and complete a task all by ourselves. Like the "Google Effect", we risk relying on AI to the point of losing our writing prowess and cognitive skills. To harness the benefits without sacrificing other skills, we must strike a balance between utilizing AI tools and nurturing our own abilities.

By Yael Mark|2023-07-05T01:57:26+00:00July 4th, 2023|Categories: Technology & Digital, Work & Employment|Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, cognition, creativity, decision making, internet, language, memory, technology|

Make or Break: The Behavioral Science of Innovation
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Make or Break: The Behavioral Science of Innovation

Behavioral Theory & Insights, Business & Management, Marketing & Consumer Behavior

Make or Break: The Behavioral Science of Innovation

Successful innovation requires far more than a market gap, a visionary, funding, and new technology. Innovation is a behavioral process from start to finish. It relies on the decision-making processes and behaviors of both producers and consumers, as well as the surrounding support system. Behavioral science, the science of how we make decisions, has invaluable practical insights for innovation on all fronts.

By Melina Moleskis|2022-12-06T01:37:52+00:00December 5th, 2022|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Business & Management, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: behavioral economics, behavioral science, confirmation bias, consumer behavior, decision making, Innovation, overconfidence, survivorship bias|

Why Do We Pay Too Much for Information?
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Why Do We Pay Too Much for Information?

Behavioral Theory & Insights, Marketing & Consumer Behavior

Why Do We Pay Too Much for Information?

Should we postpone a decision to collect more information or decide based on the information already available? This is a typical dilemma not only in business life. Psychologists have found that most people tend to wait too long and spend too much on information collection. Why is that the case? Our study gives a surprising answer.

By Marc Oliver Rieger|2022-02-17T05:22:42+00:00November 9th, 2021|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: consumer behavior, curiosity, decision deferral, decision making, information, overoptimism, purchasing behavior, risk aversion|

Tell Me Why! Explanations for Ambiguity in Health Decision Making Affect Treatment Choice
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Tell Me Why! Explanations for Ambiguity in Health Decision Making Affect Treatment Choice

Behavioral Theory & Insights, Health & Medicine

Tell Me Why! Explanations for Ambiguity in Health Decision Making Affect Treatment Choice

Medical treatment decisions are often rife with ambiguity. Exact probabilities for things like side effects or treatment success rates are frequently unknown. But why is this important? Because decision making research has shown that ambiguity can systematically alter the choices people make. We investigated how providing different explanations for the ambiguity in a treatment decision context affected willingness to adopt a treatment with an ambiguously described success rate. When the explanations involved elements that the person was knowledgeable about or could control, people were more interested in an ambiguous treatment.

By Jillian O’Rourke Stuart|2022-05-26T06:59:13+00:00August 30th, 2021|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Health & Medicine|Tags: ambiguity aversion, communication, decision making, framing, personal health, public health, salience, treatment choice|

When Red Means “Go”: Color and Cultural Reactance in Risk Preferences
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When Red Means “Go”: Color and Cultural Reactance in Risk Preferences

Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Finance & Investing, Marketing & Consumer Behavior

When Red Means “Go”: Color and Cultural Reactance in Risk Preferences

Color can affect judgment and decision making, and its effects may vary across cultures. Research reported in this article shows that cross-cultural color effects on risk preferences are influenced by personal associations of color-gain/loss. Our research finds a cultural reactance effect, a phenomenon in which people who hold culturally incongruent (vs. cultural mainstream) color associations show a stronger risk preference.

By Feng Jiang|2022-02-17T05:52:36+00:00April 6th, 2021|Categories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Finance & Investing, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: consumer psychology, cross-cultural psychology, culture, decision making, loss aversion, marketing, priming, risk, risk aversion, risk preferences, risk taking, risk tolerance, social norms|

Anchors Aweigh! How Early Perceptual Information Biases Subsequent Judgments
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Anchors Aweigh! How Early Perceptual Information Biases Subsequent Judgments

Behavioral Theory & Insights

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 Gaurav Jain|2022-02-17T05:30:57+00:00March 9th, 2021|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights|Tags: anchoring, bias, decision making, judgment, perception|

Sports in the Service of Economics
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Sports in the Service of Economics

Behavioral Theory & Insights, Society & Everyday Life

Sports in the Service of Economics

An increasing number of academic studies have used sports data to investigate economic behavior. Sports data are not only readily available, they also provide an excellent laboratory to study human behavior in real competitive environments. In this article, I will present several examples of my own work that have used sports data to explain fundamental economic theories, as well as articles that showed divergences of economic decision making from neo-classical theories.

By Alex Krumer|2022-02-17T05:38:38+00:00September 8th, 2020|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Society & Everyday Life|Tags: behavioral economics, decision making, experimental economics, incentives, motivation, prizes, social norms, sports, sports psychology, tennis|

Why We Know so Little About Culture and Decision-Making
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Why We Know so Little About Culture and Decision-Making

Behavioral Theory & Insights, Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Research Methods, Society & Everyday Life

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.

By Elina Halonen|2022-06-30T01:20:31+00:00August 3rd, 2020|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Research Methods, Society & Everyday Life|Tags: bias, culture, decision making, generalizability, heuristic, WEIRD|