Category: behavioral economics

  • Episode 23: The Best (And Only?) Way To Change Group Behavior With Ideas

    Episode 23: The Best (And Only?) Way To Change Group Behavior With Ideas

    There are lots of ways to change behavior (again read Dr. Susan Weinschenk’s book “How To Get People To Do Stuff”). But let’s talk specifically about a war of ideas. Information, such as a news report, can change your opinion on a topic, or at least in theory it’s supposed to. As long as humans…

  • Episode 22: Affect, Cognition, and Awareness

    Episode 22: Affect, Cognition, and Awareness

    Quick post to talk about affect. Affect is primarily a verb meaning make a difference. This is different from effect which essentially means result (the effect of the great pitching was a win). Affective primacy hypothesis asserts that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing.…

  • Episode 20: What is Economics Useful For?

    Episode 20: What is Economics Useful For?

    What is economics good for? I think there’s a lot of confusion as to what it can do and what its limitations are. The problem us economists face is that we must always have answers, and they must always be accurate. Anything short of that means that the entire science is bogus. But economics is…

  • Episode 19: Subjective Probability (Part 2)

    Episode 19: Subjective Probability (Part 2)

    I want to take you back to maybe 6th grade math? Ratios! A ratio just so you remember is for example, the number of shots made by a player in a basketball game, say 9 for 14, or 9/14 (a nice efficient game). But ratios really mess people up; quick, what’s better 71/331 or 42/199?…

  • Humans Calculate By Feel on the Human Tech Podcast

    Humans Calculate By Feel on the Human Tech Podcast

    In this Human Tech podcast episode we talk about behavioral economics, specifically about the idea that people don’t calculate the value of products and services rationally, but they do so by following how they feel about what something is worth. Guthrie walks us through the research and the practical implications.

  • The Book: I Love You, Now Read This Book On The Human Teach Podcast

    The Book: I Love You, Now Read This Book On The Human Teach Podcast

    In this episode Guthrie and I talk about his new book, he reads a short excerpt, we discuss what’s in it, and what it was like for him to write it. 

  • New Book on Behavioral Economics

    New Book on Behavioral Economics

    I’m excited to announce that one of the Team W staff has just published a new book. If you’ve ever thought that Behavioral Economics was boring or incomprehensible, or not relevant to your life or work, then I suggest you check out this book. I think it will change your mind. The author is our…

  • Creating Decision Points With Partitioning

    Creating Decision Points With Partitioning

    How do you make large scary ideas seem small and not so scary, or the reverse — make small things seem more important? You use the behavioral economics idea of “partitioning”. It’s all explained in this episode of the Human Tech podcast.

  • Episode 16: How To Induce Compliance

    Episode 16: How To Induce Compliance

    Let’s assume I’m evil.  What I want to do is INDUCE COMPLIANCE. I want people to do what I want. Well that might be hard to do. But what if I could get people to comply with a request? That may be simple and effective.  Dr. Susan Weinschenk wrote a whole book on how to…

  • Episode 15: How to Make Users Ignore Privacy Warnings

    Episode 15: How to Make Users Ignore Privacy Warnings

    Let’s pretend I’m an evil version of Google that cares nothing about privacy (is this an allegory about the real Alphabet… you be the judge). Anti-Google. And my slogan is “Always Be Evil”. What I want to do is get customers to disclose all of their private information to me. I want to have access…