Recently I took this course on Behavioral Economics on Coursera by Dan Ariely. It had some common sensical but good analyses of the irrationality in our economic behavior. Over next few blogs I would present some of the analyses. See if you can make use of them(at worse, this exercise will at least help me revise ;)
Emotions are transient. They last for much less time than what we expect them to.
Remember, the last time when you thought you would be very happy if you achieved something or very miserable if you lost something? Probably you were not happy/miserable for a very long time. We tend to overestimate the time for which our emotions will last.
Cognitive thinking thrown out of window!
Emotions take over our cognitive thinking. Its not that when we are emotional, our decision process is a sum of our cognition and emotions, instead, our decision making process is hijacked by our emotions! And on top of that research has shown that what we think how will we behave under an emotional state and how we actually behave are very different.
Lesson: Don't take decisions in an emotional state ;)
Also a sort of delimma: most crimes are committed by people who are overpowered by some emotion. Because we know emotions make us behave differently, should that be considered in sentences for crimes?
One vs many
A single identifiable victim arouses our emotions and inspires action. However statistics about the enormity of a problem which has several victims appeals to our cognitive thinking(rational thinking) which may not lead to same magnitude of action( e.g rationally, donating for charity doesn't make economic sense that we donate for charity)
Lesson: the next time you request for some charity(action/money/time...), pick up a single identifiable victim with a face and appeal to people's emotions with a convincing story!
Present vs future.The problem of self control
How many times do we vow to exercise self control, only to get back to our old ways(e.g how many times did you binge on sweets, fast food or skipped a workout or told a lie in spite of deciding no to?). The problem is that such actions are in present but their reward(in the form of better health or perception as a honest person) is in distant future. Because the rewards are in distant future, they seem to be too small(even though they are very important) compared to the effort we have to put into our actions at present.Rewards/pain in the present are magnified compared to rewards/pain in future.
Dan suggests that we can force ourselves to care more about future by substituting distant future awards with something in present(aka reward substitution, e.g how about two episodes of your favorite sitcom every day you go for workout)
Present vs present
We compare our present situation with the situation in which we could instead have been. This influences whether we are happy or sad because of the actions we have taken to be in the situation.
So, if we miss our flight by 2 mins we are sad because we can see so many things which we could have done to catch the flight and be in a better situation(sitting in a flight). However if we miss our flight by 2 hrs, we don't feel half as sad because we possibly couldn't have done much to have a better present.
Lesson? I don't think we can do much about it :D
Other similar posts:
Follow Dan Ariely at: http://danariely.com
Man is An Emotional being!
Transient emotionsEmotions are transient. They last for much less time than what we expect them to.
Remember, the last time when you thought you would be very happy if you achieved something or very miserable if you lost something? Probably you were not happy/miserable for a very long time. We tend to overestimate the time for which our emotions will last.
Cognitive thinking thrown out of window!
Emotions take over our cognitive thinking. Its not that when we are emotional, our decision process is a sum of our cognition and emotions, instead, our decision making process is hijacked by our emotions! And on top of that research has shown that what we think how will we behave under an emotional state and how we actually behave are very different.
Lesson: Don't take decisions in an emotional state ;)
Also a sort of delimma: most crimes are committed by people who are overpowered by some emotion. Because we know emotions make us behave differently, should that be considered in sentences for crimes?
One vs many
A single identifiable victim arouses our emotions and inspires action. However statistics about the enormity of a problem which has several victims appeals to our cognitive thinking(rational thinking) which may not lead to same magnitude of action( e.g rationally, donating for charity doesn't make economic sense that we donate for charity)
Lesson: the next time you request for some charity(action/money/time...), pick up a single identifiable victim with a face and appeal to people's emotions with a convincing story!
Losing self control
Present vs future.The problem of self control
How many times do we vow to exercise self control, only to get back to our old ways(e.g how many times did you binge on sweets, fast food or skipped a workout or told a lie in spite of deciding no to?). The problem is that such actions are in present but their reward(in the form of better health or perception as a honest person) is in distant future. Because the rewards are in distant future, they seem to be too small(even though they are very important) compared to the effort we have to put into our actions at present.Rewards/pain in the present are magnified compared to rewards/pain in future.
Dan suggests that we can force ourselves to care more about future by substituting distant future awards with something in present(aka reward substitution, e.g how about two episodes of your favorite sitcom every day you go for workout)
Present vs present
We compare our present situation with the situation in which we could instead have been. This influences whether we are happy or sad because of the actions we have taken to be in the situation.
So, if we miss our flight by 2 mins we are sad because we can see so many things which we could have done to catch the flight and be in a better situation(sitting in a flight). However if we miss our flight by 2 hrs, we don't feel half as sad because we possibly couldn't have done much to have a better present.
Lesson? I don't think we can do much about it :D
Other similar posts:
very well Written Abhishek..
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