Someone pointed me to Daniel Kahneman and Thinking Fast and Slow quite some time ago. That led me to Richard Thayer, and Behavioral Economics, and a pile of books and research explaining how “irrational” we humans are. These folk changed the “science” of economics forever.
NOW, February 2024, there is a podcast that has interviewed all of the actual players in this drama.
This includes a couple of Nobel Prize winners for Economics, who discovered that the conventional ideas of the classical economists are fundamentally flawed. Humans are NOT rational. Barely at all. I have been working on the theory that we are 95% automatic - it turns out it is more like 99% - but that’s another problem.
If you are interested, here are the references.
https://ridiculous-podcast.com/ The first one here is a trailer or preview. It might persuade you to listen for more.
OR on your podcast tool:
Opinion Science Podcast - https://opinionsciencepodcast.com/
Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/opinion-science/id1506227206
As Kahneman discovered, people do not actually make very good decisions. Most of what we do are nearly automatic responses to our history and our world. We use quick rules of thumb or gut reactions for almost everything we do. We might intellectually KNOW something we should be doing, but actually doing it is just not going to happen. And in most cases, we really have no idea why we are choosing what we do - it is the product of our genetics, our family, our education, our exposure to various ideas and influences. We are hardly even aware of all of the influencers that are operating on us. One of their early experiments would show people the pictures of candidates running for an elective office, and ask them to guess who won. People can guess who won that election with 70% accuracy just looking at the pictures.
So . . . one half of us look at the other extreme group, and say - “What is wrong with those people?” But this is the norm - we ALL do this almost ALL of the time.
If you want to actually move beyond this, and figure out how to actually help people and yourself make better decisions in our own best interests, this next book is my best reference:
The Power of Fifty Bits: The New Science of Turning Good Intentions into Positive Result
AND you can get a Kindle copy at amazon right now for $2.00. Heck of a deal.
This author was the chief scientist at Express Scripts. He spent a lot of time and energy trying to assist customers to make better health decisions. He looked at the science and research of decision making, and came up with a systematic way to accomplish his goal. I have only started the book, so I will have to come back here and give a better summary - but I could not pass up this opportunity to alert the many happy subscribers to this blog about this opportunity. The book is very well written, with wisdom and humor. Check it out.
(I think there are may be 6 subscribers in total, and I know most of you wonder what the heck is going on here, but . . . It is starting to look more like a book club. )
This is the book summary from Amazon:
Going beyond the bestsellers Predictably Irrational and Thinking, Fast and Slow, the first “how to” guide that shows you how to help customers, employees, coworkers, and clients make better choices to get what they truly want.
Of the ten million bits of information our brains process each second, only fifty bits are devoted to conscious thought. Because our brains are wired to be inattentive, we often choose without thinking, acting against our own interests—what we truly want. As the former Chief Scientist of Express Scripts, a Fortune 25 healthcare company dedicated to making the use of prescription medications safer and more affordable, Bob Nease is an expert on applying behavioral sciences to health care. Now, he applies his knowledge to the wider world, providing important practical solutions marketers, human resources professionals, teachers, and even parents can use to improve the behavior of others around them, and get the positive results they want.
Nease offers a set of powerful and effective strategies to change behavior, including:
Require Choice—compel people to deliberately choose among options
Lock in Good Intentions—allow people to make decisions today about choices they will face in the future
Let It Ride—set the default to the desired option and let people opt out if they wish
Get in the Flow—go to where peoples’ attention is likely to be naturally
Reframe the Choices—set the framework people use to consider options and choices
Piggyback It—connect the desired choice or behavior with something they already like or are engaged in
Simplify . . . Wisely—make right choices frictionless and easy, make wrong choices more difficult
And more.
