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Behavioral Science of Eating (in One Picture!)
ByadminThe Journal of the Association for Consumer Research (yes, there is such a thing!) had an outstanding issue dedicated to eating behavior recently. Here is a picture from that issue worth sharing:
My Burrito Has How Many Calories?!?
ByadminIn collaboration with Peggy Liu and Jim Bettman, I’ve had fun doing some research on just how hard it is for people to guess how many calories they are consuming, at restaurants like Chipotle where everyone puts different ingredients on their burrito. Here is the beginning of an absolutely excellent journalist’s take on the topic:…
Brilliant Nudge to Promote Physical Activity
ByadminThe stairs to the left of the escalator don’t just look like a piano keyboard, but make musical sounds as people walk on each step. Not convinced this will work? Check out this video, which shows people heading towards the escalator, and then changing direction when they realize how fun it will be to climb…
When It Comes to Sex, We Are All Animals
ByadminIt doesn’t pay for animals to miss out on reproductive opportunities. That’s why when a female baboon is at the peak of her fertility cycle, her buttocks get red and swollen, thereby alerting males to their reproductive opportunity. Cattle, too, try to take advantage of fertility, with females getting quite frisky when they are in…
Feeling Conflicted about Greed
ByadminWith jobs disappearing faster than a major league fastball, the public is understandably irate at the damage that greed has wrought upon our economy. Financiers destroy their companies, and our retirement portfolios, and then complain when their bonuses are less than 7 figures. The greedy behavior in recent headlines has not been limited to Wall…
The Availability Heuristic
ByadminAs someone who has been working in the field of behavioral economics for a couple decades now, I have long been aware of what psychologists call “the availability heuristic.” This was a phenomenon described by Kahneman and Tversky in some of their seminal research from the early 1970s. I recently came across a nice example…