iEconomics?
Check out this clever takeoff of the Mac/PC ads by my friend Dan Ariely, in which he portrays standard economics as a PC and behavioral economics, my specialty, as an iMac.
Check out this clever takeoff of the Mac/PC ads by my friend Dan Ariely, in which he portrays standard economics as a PC and behavioral economics, my specialty, as an iMac.
In a wonderful article on deep cave exploration, Burkhard Bilger shows how powerful comparison can be in putting an unfamiliar topic into context. He is describing the arduous work involved in deep cave exploration. He is describing the risks of being far, far inside the cave when a heavy rain on the surface begins to…
Upon the death of his wife, Thomas Jefferson went into a deep depression. In crushing words, he described his state of mind to his sister-in-law, in a sentence that could be placed in psychiatric manuals next to a definition of depression: “All my plans of comfort and happiness reversed by a single event and nothing…
“Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.” Amen to that!
I recently read Sharon Bertsch McGrayne’s The Theory That Would Not Die, which recounts the controversial history of Bayes theorem in the world of statistics. To oversimplify quite a bit, Bayes theorem requires those using it to make an initial guess about, say, the probability that one outcome is more likely than another, and then…
NPR recently covered my research with David Comerford on effort aversion. Our research gives some insight into how people wind up in boring jobs. You can listen to the NPR Morning Edition segment here.
In the last few decades, medical schools have been teaching us doctors to inform patients about their treatment alternatives, so our patients can pick the alternative that best fits with their individual values. Which raises the question: Should doctors take the time to figure out the cost of treatment alternatives and communicate such information to their patients? Read More