Category: Cognitive Science & Behavioral Economics
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Fighting Bias with Bias: Counternudging for Health
These three cognitive biases make health hard, but here are five ways to counteract them.
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Commitment Pledges Gone Wrong
It’s becoming increasingly popular to use commitment pledges in healthcare. But most pledges are fundamentally flawed. Here’s why.
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The Problem of Egocentrism in Societal Advancement (and Some Potential Solutions)
We should anticipate significant changes in our economy and society in the next 10-15 years concomitant with the increasing rate of technological innovation. However, many people underestimate just how different our future could be. If we want to do a good job preparing for societal transformation, which will likely require hard collective choices about the…
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Three Ways to Fix Personal Finance with Behavioral Economics
We’re awful at personal finance. It’s not because we’re dumb — it’s just that personal finance is a minefield of cognitive biases. Consider almost any cognitive bias: procrastination, planning fallacy, confirmation bias, affective forecasting errors, endowment effects, sunk costs, or hyperbolic discounting. Each of these biases leads to poor decisions that impede our financial goals.…
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Why Iron Free Dominates Wrinkle Free: Lessons for Marketers
There are multiple ways to position a product. Marketers often highlight product features, such as “wrinkle free.” However, we know that it’s often best to address specific consumer pain points, such as “iron free.” It is clear from Google Trends that the pain point solution “iron free” dominates searches, and its cyclicality likely reflects…