Hello Mr. Dean.
>> Hello. >> Welcome, thank you for joining me
today for our office hours. >> My pleasure.
>> We have a ton of pressing questions from your students.
And I am going to pose these at you. Hopefully you can give me some answers.
>> Let's, let's hope. It will be really embarrassing if I
can't. >> [LAUGH] Yeah it would, It would.
I'll try to stump you[LAUGH] . First, for the question that's been on
everyone's minds, what is your favorite kind of pie?
>> Favorite kind of pie, so I would have to say 3.1436.
How does that work? I forget the sequence but, Pi as being an
irrational number has been a favorite of mine.
Actually predictably rational is the, Pi, Pi which I particular like.
I don't think anybody understood that particular aspect but as an irrational
number I like that. Now in terms of real pies.
I would have to say. I'm, I'm embarrassed to say, but I
probably like the most standard pie of them all, which is apple pie.
I know it's plain, it's the typical answer but, maybe there's a reason for
that. >> I also enjoy apple pie.
Alright, so, on a more serious note, there's been a little bit of confusion on
your use of rationality and irrationality.
And would you like to explain for the students what you mean by that?
>> Yep, so, so there's lots of ways to think about rational and irrational
behavior and one way is to think about people who are crazy versus normal, and
that's not what I mean. And I think about two ways of thinking
about rationality. The first one is about the economic
definition of rationality. An economic definition of rationality is
that people have complete and transitive preferences that we know all preferences
in some sorted order, what we like more or less, and we don't have a violation of
transitivity. If we like a more than b, and b more than
c, we don't like c more than a. And this is the, the version of
rationality in economic thinking right, we can compute, we can think in advance,
all of those things. And I care first about that definition.
Why? Because economics is not just a
descriptive study of what's going on in the world, it's also a prescriptive
study. It's also a study that tell people in
policy and government, the individuals how people should live their lives.
And if the assumption, the basic assumption of rationality are violating
economics, it means we should think very differently about the recommendation, the
recommendations of economics. So, if economics tell us how we should do
taxes and healthcare and education and so on, but it's based on assumption that are
not correct, maybe we should rethink before we take on these recommendations.
That's the first definition. What economics believe.
The second version of it which I actually care more about is the version in which
we ourselves don't understand what drives our behavior.
So think about a case in which economics is wrong about.
But you as an individual understood perfectly well.
Well, maybe you don't care what economic theory has to do, because you understand
it perfectly well. for example generosity, in standard
economic theory people should not be altruistic towards other people, but we
all understand that people sometime are altruistic and helpful to each other even
there are no incentives. This is a case economics gets it wrong.
Do I care about those cases? Not so much because people understand
that we're altruistic in nature to allow us degree.
The second version I care about is when we don't understand what drives our
behavior. So for example, if you think that you're
driven by some parts of reason but in fact you're driven by emotion, you're
going to be not prepared well for situation would confront you with
different decisions and therefore you might be trapped.
If you don't understand that you have too much trust in people and people might
abuse your trust. That opens the door for misbehavior.
If you don't understand conflicts of interest, and how it could change
people's behavior, again it can trap us. So this second version is a version which
I care about, which is that if people, if we all don't understand what's drive our
behaviors, we're likely to make a mistake.
And as somebody who cares about fixing things, I care about this definition to a
very large degree. >> Wonderful, thank you.
>> By the way, thanks for the compliment. You, you know the, you remember the
research on, compliments that when you give people compliments they like you
more and think highly of you, even if they know the compliments are insincere?
>> That's very of nice of you. [LAUGH]
>> So are there cases where you would want to be irrational or is rational this
thing we should all strive for, we want to be rational human beings?
>> So, so think about these two definitions.
These two ways of being rational. I think that the case in which we don't
understand what drives our behavior, that's not something I want to have.
I can't see a reason for doing it. But the case in which we have
irrationalities that I actually think are good.
That absolutely the case. falling in love, being emotional, caring
about our kids, caring about the things that we create to a large degree.
And of course, being altruistic. The fact that we're capable of being
wonderful to each other. Contributing to the social good and
actually enjoying from that back. All that is not part of the standard
economic theory. It's not that the economic theory cannot
be modified to take this into account. But these are beautiful things about
human nature. I don't necessarily want to fix them.
Now there are some things I would like to fix.
Like, we have tremendous capacity for love, we also have tremendous capacity
for hate. It will be nice to get rid of some of it,
but not the other. But in total, I think the fact that we
are creatures that have this empathic ability to think about other people in
our society, and so on, is definitely something I would like not just to keep,
but maybe even, nourish. >> Alright.
how do you think that doing research on irrationality has effected your own
thinking and decision making. >> So, so first of all I think that,
the wonderful thing about social science is that I now walk around the world
thinking about experiments. And, If you think about it you know, we
use to think that the big mysteries in life are things that have to with the
stars or maybe molecular biology. And I think that now we're realizing how
bigger the mysteries in our everyday life and how big of a mystery is our brain.
So for me the fun thing about being a social scientist is I can go to have
lunch somewhere and I look at the price list and I think about experiments.
I think about what other people are eating.
I look about what somebody's eating hot stuff and it's kind of an interesting
question. Just before I came here somebody was
listening to some sad music. What?
Why? Why do people listen to sad music?
It's kind of an interesting thing. Do you want to be sad?
Under what condition? So.
The first thing I really like about it is that everything is a question, there's a
lot we don't know, and you can just wonder around the world from this
perspective, and it's a, it's a nice aspect.
Now, you can also ask whether it has benefits.
And I think you can think about the few things.
First of all, when I make decisions in a mindless way.
Just making decisions of course, I make the same mistakes as everybody else.
I think when I slow down and think about it I can sometimes recognize what are the
extra forces that could shape my decision.
What is the influence by the sales person, by the weather.
By what other people are doing, what is this website exactly trying to get me to
do? And under those conditions, if I slow
down I think I can make a better decision.
And finally, I think I understand or appreciate to a higher degree the role of
habit. You know, and you can ask yourself.
If you have to make a decision every time what are the chances you'll make a good
decision? Not so high.
What if you get into a good habit? I think good habits actually have a way
to stay with us for a long time, take away our need to make a decision and
instead have a policy that is a good policy for us.
So I think between all of those, I make some better decision, not all the time,
not always but at least some. >> Alright, So if you notice someone
who is behaving irrationally, should you point it out to them?
Should you try and help them correct their behavior, and is there a more
tactful way to do this, that doesn't offend them?
>> So, first of all, if there are member of your family, your significant
other, your mother and so on, never try[LAUGH] I don't recommend it.
you know that, they say that when doctors go to medical school, the read about a
disease and they immediately think they have it.
>> Yeah. [LAUGH].
>> And I think the same thing happens to people who, study decision making, you
look at the decision you understand the mistake you see how it happens to you.
Which is very good. But then you see how other people are
irrational. And sometimes I think, we can see
rationality more clearly on other people. But trying to correct people is something
that needs to be done with tact. I, I'll tell you, if I think about how I
try to do it, both in classes and in, in writing, I usually try to give people
examples of other people. I think that coming to somebody and say,
look at this, you just made a mistake, is a, a confrontational offensive part.
But I think that if you came to somebody and say, hey there is this study, here is
what people do. There's a chance that this person might
recognize it on themself and might take the, the action.
Now I think it's true that if you confronted somebody more directly they
would say it but I also think it could be offensive.
So I prefer to say here is what happens in general to other people and let the
person draw the final conclusion for themselves.
Hoping they would do it. Maybe if they don't you can push them a
little further and say by the way, other people might think that you're behaving
like this as well, not me. Other people.
>> Okay. So quite a few people have been have
concerned about the moral implications of, studying this but also intervening in
people's behavior. >> So, yeah, is it ethical to try and,
manipulate other people's decisions? >> Yeah.
So this is a very deep, this is a very deep problem.
This is the problem of paternalism. So.
Imagine that I taught you ten tricks of how to influence people's behaviors.
And now the question is to what degree should you or shouldn't you do that.
there's a couple of answers for that. First of all we need to recognize that
the world is setting up some things to be easier than others.
And if you think about something like, in New York City there's a debate recently
about whether Mayor Bloomberg should prohbit large portions of soft drinks
with lots of sugar or he should not. And people say well that's an
intervention in people's lives. So first of all we need to recognize that
the world is in a particular state in which you could get a 64 ounce drink,
which is, you know, basically what a whole family should consume.
But you could get one of those if you go to some, some places.
And, and the world is presenting us with these options.
And the world has kind of come up to say that this is okay and this is fine.
And the question is, should we, should we fight that?
And so, so I think we need to recognize that we, sometimes we just need to make a
decision. And we could make a decision to allow it
or not allow it and none of those decisions is inherently more moral than
the other, just are two very different decisions, but one of them is enjoying
the status quo. One of them is enjoying the current state
of affairs right now. It could have, we could have imagined
that it was the other status quo. The, the thing about influencing people,
is that I don't think we would ever have, a fully satisfying philosophical standing
on that. And, I think that in general, human
freedom, human decision making, letting people make the right choices for
themselves, is a good value to have and to hold.
At the same time, I also think that there are many cases in which people are
incapable of making the right decisions for themselves.
You can think about kids, of course. You can think about adults in tough
situations. You can think about people who make
decisions with very little information compared to companies that have a lot of
information about it. You can think about situation which the
company or the supermarket can pump the smell of fresh baked goods into the
supermarket leaving you helpless in the light of your, you know, evoking, hunger.
So when you think about all of those I think we have these two things running at
the same time. We have a desire to let people choose for
themselves and we have the recognition that people are unlikely in all cases to
make the right decisions, and I don't think we'll ever find something that is
black and white. If we should always let people do what
they want or always prevent people from doing, doing what they want.
I think it's always going to be a struggle.
Now, the thing with that struggle is that sometimes we see the negative
consequences of bad behavior. Think about something like driving.
When people drive and they make mistakes we see the mistakes.
We see people dying. We see people killing each other.
It's unavoidable not to recognize that people make mistakes while driving.
When people drink too much soft drinks or eat too many donuts or basically become
obese, it's not one big decision that is killing them, it's a lot of small
decisions that is contributing to that. And in those cases, we don't see it as
much, it's not as saliant, and because of that, I think we're not as likely to act
on it. So, anyway I guess giving a long complex
answer is a good way to say, this is a complex philosophical problem.
I don't ever think we'll have the right solution.
I think we need to do, be empirical about this.
We need to take each domain and say how much do we value human freedom in this
domain. How much trouble can people put themself
into if we gave them freedom to make whatever decision they make and how do we
weigh those things? And because of that I'm very happy to
regulate things like caloric consumption and healthcare.
I'm happy to regulate things like long-term financial savings, I'm happy to
regulate driving, I'm happy to regulate gun control, there's lots of things I'm
happy to regulate. There's some things I'm less less happy
to regulate and I should also say the more I study irrationality, the more I
believe in regulation. And it's not because it makes me believe
more that the government is composed of smart intelligent wonderful people, but
it makes me realize how little, how helpless we are to making the right
decisions ourselves. >> So what wouldn't you regulate?
>> What wouldn't I regulate? Sense of humor.
[LAUGH] So, no. So, so, so the kind, the kind of things
that I think I, I would be more hesitant to regulate are things like exercise,
right? So there's, there's lots of things with
healthcare and intake and so on. I think exercise is something I would
not, it's part of healthcare, habitual regular intake of caloric consumption not
sure I am happy to regulate that. I am not sure I would regulate, actually
I am sure I would not regulate family structure.
And I would not regulate education for example, at this point, in the sense that
I don't think we understand, what creates good education.
So, to regulate something. Let's say we want to regulate elementary
schools. Before I'm read to regulate something, I
want to know that I have a good answer for that.
And I think with what education is concerned, right now, we don't yet
understand what gets schools to be good and schools to be bad.
What, information teachers should follow, shouldn't follow.
So until we have a good answer I'm not willing to do it.
And also I think with schools, parent have some choice, about which schools
they choose. So maybe that creates a benefit, as well.
So if there's something like education, which I think there's tremendous
androgenating with skills, and we don't have the right answer yet, I'm not too
happy to regulate it. But if, if the world would change, as I'm
hoping it would, and we understood much more about education, maybe I would be
willing to do that as well. >> Alright.
so one of your students wrote in about a big problem in Paris.
I don't know if you've heard about this but dog walkers, dog owners, are taking
their dogs on walks and leaving their remains behind.
>> The poop? >> The poop, yes.
And apparently it's become this huge problem.
people are being fined for doing it, if they're caught.
But what are the chances they'll be caught?
And is that a good solution, you think, to get people to pick up their dog poop?
>> Shoot them. No.
Big punishment; execute them. No.
So this thing is going to relate very well to, Goldstein's lecture on social
proof. So imagine the following you know that
something is illegal, but everywhere you walk on the pavement you see signs of
other people doing that. Which one of those two forces would win?
The force that says this is illegal or the force that says everybody else is
doing it? Probably the force that says everybody
else is doing it is, is very important in, in clarifying this.
And actually Cialdini and others have some really nice research.
They show that if you go to a park, and there's lots of pieces of trash, people
are very likely to throw another piece of trash there.
But if you go and there's one piece of trash, now you're very unlikely to do it.
Why? Because the single piece of trash.
Make it saliant there is only one person who has done that.
Everybody else has, is, has been nice. And it shows you how unpleasant it is.
So if we follow this example, what I would do is I would put from time to
time. I would put a piece of very smelly.
Eh, particularly unpleasant poop. Just to demonstrate the effect, but make
sure they are far and few between. Maybe we can create some industry of fake
smelly eh, salient fake poop that would be helpful[COUGH] for that regard.
And I think it would show both things. It would also show how unpleasant it is.
And show, how, how unlikely it is. The problem, of course, is how do you
move from a situation which everybody accepts this as a social norm to
something that doesn't happen. You can think about lots of other cases
like this. And not too long ago I got a, an e-mail
from a woman in Greece. And she said it turns out we have to
strat paying taxes. Why now?
Why can't we start in a few months? She bought her house illegally.
She was oging to sell it now, hopefully illegally in terms of without taxes.
And now she has to pay taxes. She says can't they wait until after I
finish selling my house? The problem is for those regulations in
terms of a selfish motivation. There's never a good day.
So, I think we need to think about this transition from a poopful society to a
poopless society for the French and I think there's no smooth transition.
You need to pick a, a quick transition. So, what I would do is.
I would announce a day. In which, this new regulation new rules
would happen. That's the first thing.
I would get people to sign up for that so everybody agreed in advance that that's
the day people would change. And then I would accompany it with, fake
smelly poop plus big fines and then start from that point to usher a much better
social process. >> Alright, Veks Melipu.
>> You know what, maybe one more thing. you know, the French, at least
culturally, I'm, I'm just kind of riffing on cultural stereotypes, I think are very
proud of their culture. What if you told them it's only the
British who are doing that? [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] Would all of a sudden, French pride be connected to not doing
that? >> be doing that.
That will be a fun experiement. >> we can do that.
Alright. You talk about how much you love movies.
[CROSSTALK] >> I do love movies.
>> Yeah. Would you recommend some movies for, for
your students to watch? >> Recommend some movies?
So, one of the movies, eh, that kind of made a big impact on me, eh, was Harold
and Maude. It's was an old movie, probably came out
before your time. >> I've seen it[LAUGH] And I think it
actually gave me a very different perspective on.
On aging and, and life cycle and on what causes people to be happy.
so and from that prospective it's a movie that stay with me for, for a long tome
and I think had kind of a, a, thoughtful influence on me.
So that's That would definitely be, be one.
another movie that kind of links to these notions of dishonesty we're going to talk
about is the Godfather. And if you think about that movie, or the
series of movies. what is so interesting there, this was
my, my first time I actually thought about the mob, uh,um, organized crime.
And what, what's so interesting about it is, the sense of what is acceptable and
not acceptable, the sense of what is legal and not legal, what is moral and
not moral, where the boundaries are. And, and I think there's lots of lessons
from there to not just for the crime families, but for all of us about how do
we draw the lines of morality, around us. So that would be another one.
oh, can I say something about books? >> Sure.
>> So, my favorite all-time book, it's a, it's a short book, it's by Jerome K
Jerome, called Three Men in a Boat. And it was written a long time ago, and
one of the reasons I like this book so much is that I think it has such a deep
understanding of psychology. He has a deep understanding of how people
feel about sharing labor, that everybody is working more.
He has a deep understanding of how people think about time.
There's all kind of fantastic insights in this book about how people think about
themselves, society their friends and so on.
And, it's wonderful to see a book that was written, I don't know, 120 years ago
with so much relevance new onset to our society.
>> Right. Right.
>> I'm getting great that I feel? [LAUGH]
>> A plus. Would you like to share one one of the
stories. Jerome K Jerome because there's some good
ones. >> There's lots of good ones
I think, I think that the story I of the ones I like the most is the beginning
part of the book and in the beginning part of the book he feels that he is not
feeling well. and he sees an ad in the newspaper saying
these are the symptoms for hepatitis. You might feel weak and you're not as
strong and you feel tired and you don't feel like working and this probably means
you have a hepatitis and here's a potion you should take.
By the way, at that time there was no solution for a hepatitis but it was some
kind of potion that you should take for it, see somebody was trying to sell it.
And the hero of the, of the story says, oh I just realized when I was a kid
everybody thought I was lazy. Everybody thought I was just not
interested. In fact, I had hepatitis and everybody
was just torturing me for no good reason, and[COUGH], and this, of course, is, is
about two things. It's about the fact that when you see a
list of illnesses of something, you can always recognize yourself, what's really
easy. To recognize yourself in it and it's also
about the power of placebos, that it reminds you about how many illnesses have
been cured by placebo. By the way in that particular case the
hero of the story says that when his grandmother would spank him he would be
automatically cured of his hepatitis and it would help him a lot to get extra
energy. [LAUGH] to go to school but I think this
whole notion about medicine and how to we read diseases into something and how
psychological are diseases or, what, what's the state of mind that gets you to
be miserable versus not. Plus placebos are very, very helpful.
It's also interesting how often we want to find a name for something.
So I've been thinking a lot about Attention Deficit Disorder.
A lot of parents seems to me like they are motivated to have a diagnosis for the
kids as having Attention Deficit Disorder.
And I think that they, again this is just intuition, I have no data, but I think at
the moment you have a label for something.
All of a sudden it's not a bad kid, or it's not a, over active kid, or it's not
your fault. It's just a disease.
So I'm, I'm very interested in this notion that the moment we can call
something by a name, particularly by a logical name, and associate some brain
function with it. All of a sudden the separation in our
personal responsibility changes. So if, if we have an overactive kid who
is just, you know, unpleasant to be around, maybe it's tough as the parent
for that kid to, how you think about yourself.
But if the kid has an overactive pituitary gland or an overactive
something else, all of a sudden you probably don't feel guilty to the same
degree. So I think even that aspect about how do
we name things, label them and how, what's the relationship between debt and
responsibility is very interesting. >> Alright.
So, if you were to design a wellness program, would you create one that find
people for engaging in unhealthy behaviors or pay them to be healthy.
>> Yep, so I think it would depend. So here's the thing.
in general we have this principle of loss of version.
Loss of version shows that people hate losing more than they enjoy gaining.
So if every time you behave badly I would take two dollars away from you.
That would be more influential than if every time you behave nicely I gave you
two dollars alright so. So it's cheaper to take money away from
people. Actually it could be beneficial.
>> [LAUGH] Yeah. >> you can even make money from them.
[SOUND] So, so that's the first thing, however, what we need to ask ourself is
whether we want to create a long term intervention or whether we want the
intervention to be there for awhile and then we take the money away.
So here's the thing. If you punish people, you punish, you
punish, you punish, you punish. You get people to behave a certain way,
what happens when the punishment goes away?
Would people all of a sudden keep on with that behavior or will they revert?
And you can think about what will happen on the positive side.
You reward people, you rew, you reward people and so on now you take it away.
What will happen now? And our general understanding is that
when punishment is present, it's more powerful than a reward.
But when the reward and punishment go away, it's the reward behavior that can
continue. So if I rewarded you for some particular
behavior, after awhile you might find internal joy in that behavior.
Exercising, eating your vegetables, whatever it is, you would actually
transistion from depending on the external reward to having some internal
reward to that. With punishment, that transition is much,
much harder. So I would ask the question of whether
I'm going to continue with the punishment and the reward for a long time.
And whether this is the kind of behavior that is, has a chance of getting habit or
not. And if it has a chance of gtting into a
habit, and if it's something that I'm going to stop, the, the contigency of the
reward and punishment, I would go with rewards.
>> Alright, alright. Isn't there some research showing that
when you reward people, people for doing things that are intrinsically motivated
it become the extrinsic reward so it takes the place of the intrinsic.
>> Yeah. >> Reward.
>> So if you start with the situation of something that the people are happy to
do, you stop with something that it is,intrinsic motivation and then you add
money to it you can actually reduce the intrinsic motivation.
So the most famous study on this was in, in I think 1973, and the took kids and
they said, here are magic markers. Why don't you draw with these magic
markers and they gave these magic markers to kids and they said every a day we will
pick a kid that has the best drawing and we'll give the kids a prize.
And they did it for a while, and they stopped the prizes.
What happened? the kids stopped playing with magic
markers and went back to crayons. This was a new technology and the kids
basically with defining this behavior as a behavior with a contingency that
basically reduced intrinsic motivation. The, the kind of things that, that we're
talking about is to take something that has no intrinsic value in the beginning,
in, in health behavior. Right, you're not really motivated
towards running or exercising or eating better.
And we're trying to see whether we can over time get you to have some of that.
but if we started with something that had a high potential for intrinsic
motivation, I wouldn't necessarily try to add payment to that.
I would just try to add payment for this if it was something like running.
So here's an interesting thing. They tell me, as you can see I'm not a
runner. But they tell me that if you run for six
weeks you develop intrinsic motivation. You start getting used to it, you crave
the adrenaline rush. You start setting up in your day.
And you start creating it. So presuming you can pay me for six
months, they start getting extra kind of pleasure from that.
And then you can stop. And then they would presumably continue.
But, but you're right, it is question for how long you continue, and what's the
starting point, and can you actually pay people too much so that it counteracts
their intrinsic motivation is also possible, and we need to worry about
that. >> Excellent, I would love to get paid
to exercise. [LAUGH]
>> You do? >> Yeah.
>> Over six weeks? >> [LAUGH] Oh, alright.
>> Running every day? >> How much?
>> I don't know, how much, how much do you need?
>> How much do I need It's going to take a lot.
[LAUGH] >> Give me a number.
>> $200 a day. >> $200 is great.
And we know that a[UNKNOWN] version works better.
So from now on every day you don't run you pay me $200?
>> No. [LAUGH] I don't think so.
[LAUGH] Alright. Someone asks what color socks you're
wearing. So you can just, show them.
>> So I, I wear, these, these socks have multiple colors actually.
And so there, there was a company called Littlemissmatch and they sell three socks
in a package. And all of them are slightly, are
slightly different. And I did a research project a while ago
on one of the biggest mysteries in the universe, which is, how can people lose
so many sockses, like, what happens to all the sockses?
Or to all the socks. Say socks.
Socks, socks. >> [LAUGH].
>> And we, we tried different, different accounts of, of the mystery.
and one of the reason turns out that people over count missing socks.
So people often have some socks in the laundry room and some in the basket, and
maybe some socks in the suitcase, and so on.
And you see one sock from a pair here, but you don't see the other part of the
pair. Then later on, you see the other member
of that pair somewhere else, but you don't remember that you just saw the, the
sock, so you double count it. So people double count missing socks.
And, anyway, I was obsessed with figure out this mystery, you know, how many
socks go, disappear in the dryer and so on.
And when I was introduced to this revolutionary idea of selling three socks
that are all slightly different and therefore all fit, I figure this will
solve the mystery of missing socks. I will never have to look at a single
sock and say, where is the pair of that socks.
It also turns out it's ideal for travelling.
I just take a pile of socks. >> [LAUGH].
>> There's never a reason, there's never a reason to put two together, like,
this, this. Think about taking two socks and put them
together and folding a little bit again, that's when you realize you're missing
one. Terrible why wouldn't it.
So now, I have a pile of socks, they all look quite differently.
By the way, today I, just so happened, I picked two that look the same but it
doesn't have to be. I have decreased dramatically my anxiety
about life[LAUGH] Wow. [LAUGH].
>> Maybe I should get. >> You can see I am clearly interested
in this topic. >> Yeah, yeah, very passionate about
it. oh man.
Okay. so.
To what extend do you think individual behavior drives collective behavior and
vice versa, collective behavior driving an individual's behavior.
>> So, so I think both, both of those take, take place.
So lets, lets think for a second about the case in which Individual behavior
drives collective behavior. imagine that you're in a stadium watching
some football game for example, and all of a sudden one person you know, paints
half of their body blue and half their body white.
And they take their shirt off and start jumping up and down and cheering and so
on. Ask yourself what is the what's the odds
that all of a sudden you would feel more comfortable doing the same, the same
thing. And the reality is that it's really easy
to, to create there's some well known people who are getting paid to a lot of
money to be exactly that a, actor and they go to sporting event and getting the
whole crowd to be wild. And it is because, when everybody is
sitting, one person who stands up is incredibly saliant, you see their
behavior and they establish a new norm, and everybody actually wants to get a
little crazy and wild in games. That's why we, we go, you don't want to
sit there, quiet and drink your tea. And, so, so it, because of that, things
can escalate to a higher degree, and by the way you can also think about things
like riots, in this case. we've had lots of demonstrations in
recent mem, memory around the world, and you can ask yourself what differentiates
cases in which the demonstrations were peaceful, and that cases with a
demonstration became violent, and you can say maybe it's about the people, or maybe
it's the organization. But the reality is that you don't need
much to take a peaceful demonstration, maybe one or two, extreme outlyers of
misbehavior can actually get the whole mob to to follow them.
I think it's an important realization to, to have.
So these are cases in which a few examples of people can actually lead the
whole, the whole crowd. And then the opposite happens, as well.
Eh, once we see lots of people behaving in a certain way, that creates the social
norm of what is acceptable. And there's a good chance that we would
follow, as well. And, just as an intuitive example,
imagine that you were in some room with lots of people.
All of sudden there were fire alarms. Right, and everybody's running in one,
one direction. Ask yourself whether you would stop, look
around and say hey. Where should I go?
Everybody's running that way but maybe there are other exits in other places.
Very hard to think about this right? Most likely you would just basically be
drawn to whatever other people are doing and indeed every time.
Almost every time that there's a fire in some public domain, you find that there
are some exits where people did not have enough time to escape from, and some
people were run over, and so on. And some exited that were empty and
nobody went to them. And it's because we have this tremendous
urge to follow other people. >> Well that's a depressing note to end
on. >> That's a depressing note, so can
you, maybe, ask me a happy question? >> Yeah, okay, let's get a different
one. I'm not actually, your answer to this may
be pretty depressing tool, so, you talk about the identifiable victim effect.
>> Yep. >> And, one person asked if you have a
non-profit, and you're looking for donations for your charity let's say
would it be more effective to show the smiling face of the people who've
received help, or the suffering faces of people who need your help?
>> Yeah, so, so I think suffering is more powerful than happiness.
And so, so it's nice to know that the people we've helped are happy now.
Eh, but this is about the money that they have received already.
Eh, if we want to motivate people it is about, it is about caring.
And caring comes from empathy. And we don't have the same amount of
empathy to happiness than we are to, to misery.
Actually, this might depress you more. If, if, if you think about it, it's
actually kind of interesting. imagine you were running a lab on
happiness. And ask yourself, what could you do to
get people to be happier? Like, what kinds of things could you do
in a lab, to get people to be happier? You would quickly find out that we don't
have many tools, right. Chocolate, food, sex, maybe some music.
I mean, all of those make people a little happy, but they all have diminishing
returns. Right, there's some limit to what you can
get in terms of food, music, sex and so on.
What about misery? Alright if you had a lab for misery what
kind of things could you create to get people to be miserable.
Lots of ways to be miserable right. I mean there's lots of ways to inflict
pain, lots of ways to inflict emotional pain, electrical trucks.
I mean, just think about all the things we can do and what even is more
distressing is that. Well happiness, how much food can you
have? At some point food if you ate more and
more it will actually be negative. Electrical shocks there's no limit to how
much misery we can create, it doesn't have the same level of diminishing
return. So for some reason and you can speculate
why this is, evolutionarily, we have a much more, much higher capacity for
misery. Then we have a capacity for happiness,
and you know, you can argue that,[COUGH], happiness draws us and misery gets us to
go away from somebody and you can say it may be evolutionary.
happiness is good but misery can kill us, right.
So if you eat something good you might get to live another day.
If you eat poison you die. Today.
So maybe there's a reason for this losser version.
Maybe there's a reason for the negativity bias.
That's why we pay much more attention downside, because the downside can kill
us. It has infinite negative payoff.
The upside can have, can be better but it's not, it's not really symmetrical and
maybe that's one way why we have evolved to pay more attention to.
At misery than, than happiness. Eh, but because of this appeals, that are
based on misery are, are just much more enticing, much more captivating they,
much more emotional, much more compelling and the, the range that you can actually,
eh, get people to emote and to feel emotion, it's just much, much higher on
the negative side, than the positive side.
Am I depressing you more? >> Yeah, a little bit.
>> So, so ask me somthing happy. >> Alright.
ask you something happy. this might be semi neutral[LAUGH].
How can an understanding of decision making be used in negotiation?
>> In negotiation, so lots of, lots of things in, in negotiation.
[COUGH] . I, I would say maybe to think about first
of all about anchoring, right. So, anchoring is the idea that we started
the discussion in a particular point, and there's a good chance the discussion
would end at that at that point. So if you're going into negotiation the
question is what is the right way to start a negotiation?
So I think that that will be the first thing.
What is the number that you want to throw out, first that will lead the discussion
depending on which side you are you want it to be either high or low.
In negotiation there's also this basic principle called a BATNA, the, the best
alternative to a negotiated agreement. And the idea is that, when we negotiate,
we can get all excited about the negotiation.
But it's actually important to remember what happen if you don't come to an
agreement in a negotiation. So, good negotiators come up in advance
and say to themselves, let me be clear about what would be my benefits and costs
if we don't come to an agreement. And this way as you go into negotiation,
you don't get kind of too excited about the process because you continuously
compare it to something else which is your anchor point.
And there's less of a chance that if you get to it not so good agreement you would
actually, go ahead with this. And other things that are important about
negotiation is to understand emotions. Emotions could be either in your favor or
can play against you. What emotions do you want in the
negotiation room. I think it's also something important to
think about. But in general negotiation is just ah,a
prolonged decision making with some, with some rounds, and I think lots of the
lessons that we have from decision making apply to there as well.
>> Alright. >> You know what?
Let me say something you know, of course you can think about a personal
relationship as negotiation as well. Think about something like marriage.
so a couple of years ago I went on a website called stupid.com.
And I found this little game and the game had two rods that you and I would hold
for example. And every second there was an electrical
shock that became stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger.
And the game kept going on and on and on, until one person left.
So, the question is, who would win at the end, and who would lose.
But if you think about it, it was a process in which every second was
painful. And it's a game that has two elements.
It has an element of somebody would win at the end, so it's a competition, but it
also has an element of coordination. Because if the competition lasts longer,
everybody suffers more. So, we had the idea of, that this is a
little bit like couples fighting. So if you're married to somebody and
you're dating somebody, and you're fighting, every moment of fighting you
both lose, in some sense you're both miserable.
Now at the end of the day, somebody would win.
But if you could only agree early on about who would win, you will avoid a lot
of suffering and misery. So, so I think that's another kind of
good metaphor to think about negotiation, not all negotiation, but some negotiation
in which the process itself is incredibly unpleasant, and then the question is, how
do you get the process to become to terminate faster.
And at least in, in the way that marriages go or relationships go, that's
there used to be this, psychology psychological wisdom of what's called
active listening. Yes honey, I hear you, I understand you
and so on kind of deep engagement in the process.
Here is what happened and so on, it turns out saying yes, dear, is much, much more
beneficial, both to finish that particular debate, but also to have a
lower chance of having debates later. So that's another lesson on negotiation.
A good lesson. >> But you don't say it with sarcasm.
>> [LAUGH]. No, no sarcasm.
But it has to fell natural. >> Right, right.
I can see how this can also be applied in work relationships with your co-workers.
>> You're absolutely right. >> We should try it[LAUGH] So, there's
been a lot of discussion about our Don't Click Here button.
Yes. >> It's on the website.
Would you like to tell the students what's behind that?
>> Well, it's just clear. You just can't click.
>> Right. Okay.
Moving on. >> You're not allowed to click.
>> No, no. >> Please don't click.
>> It says don't, so honestly. >> Yeah, so you shouldn't.
>> -- you shouldn't. No.
Okay. >> Just wanted to clarify that.
>> Yeah. >> and let's finish with this last
question. I think we've taken up quite a bit of
time here. you
>> Are you telling me something, is it too boring or No, no, no, no.
It's scintillating. >> Okay.
[LAUGH] >> You talk a lot about the need for
experimentation and testing our intuitions.
How can maybe a small business or[COUGH] just someone who wants to do an
experiment on their own, do so cheaply and easily?
>> So, so the key to any experiment is a control group.
That's really the, the key. I mean, it's, it's very tempting to say,
okay, I think this would work better than what I have now, so.
Imagine just for fun that you're have a particular meal that you're cooking a lot
of times and you got, you got used to that particular meal.
And you say to yourself, I think I want to start cooking something very
differently and you just start cooking something very differently.
And, the question is is this going to be better?
Now if you just start doing something differently you're going to compare what
you're experiencing now to your memory, from before.
Or you're going to, to ask other people to experience what they're doing now
compared to some other reference group. But it might not be that easy.
and it might not be easy, because lots of other things might have changed.
Maybe your, weight has changed. Maybe it's, the time of the year has
changed. Maybe your memory is not that good.
So, the key to experiments is really having two things to compare.
And only once you have these two things to compare, you can actually draw some
reasonable conclusion. Now sometimes you can compare what
happened now to what happened before, that's not as good as comparing two
things side by side. Now the trick is that if you have to do
two things side by side you're wasting some effort.
So again just take the cooking example. It's not a great example but I'll stay
with this. I guess the son coughs.
I started with it. I'll keep on doing that.
[COUGH] And, and the ideal solution would be to cook both things for a few nights.
And then taste a little bit of one. A little bit on the other.
And maybe in a blind way so you don't know which one it is.
Offering other people taste one fork from this.
One fork from that. And look at the direct comparison.
Now this is going to take some time and effort.
You'll have to cook things both ways, you'll have to compare them, maybe you'll
have some extra food, and if one of them is not as good, you're stuck with that,
and so on until you've finished the left overs.
But nevertheless, having the experiment and a control group, at the same time is
crucial because if you're going through the trouble of changing something.
It could be good to know the changes you're doing are actually for, for the
better and to be sure that this is the case.
Now, control conditions are not always easy and they're always time consuming
but, without them there's really no way for experimentation.
So, whatever you do, you do something in your personal life, you do something at
work, you do something for your business, you do something as a government, I
think, thinking about what's the control condition and how do we spend some
resources on having that as well is, is crucial.
>> Sounds great. >> Sounds good.
any experiments you want to do in your personal life?
>> In my personal lift[LAUGH]. I'm doing experiments everyday.
>> With a control group. >> Yes.
>> so the other thing about, experiments is that you have to run them
for awhile, especially if you're thinking about something in your own personal
life. So, imagine that you wanted to compare
how your health would look like if you did yoga versus you start running.
Alright. I mean, these are two very different
approaches. And the problem is it's very hard to
imagine you could do one for three weeks and the other one for three weeks and
actually have a good insight into which one of them is better for your behavior.
So you know If you think about it, life goes through up and down, and all kinds
of things happening, and so on. You actually need a substantial amount of
data to, reassure yourself that this actually, better.
So in, in social science, we have a particular, what we call a p value,a
particular level of statistical signifigance.
That we say, okay. If the data is sufficiently different
we're going to trust it but in real life once you start an experiment and the
experiment doesn't seem like its going, the wrong way like, okay here two things
I think this will be better but you know I'm running it for four days and this is
neither seem to be have an effect. So I'll give you an example.
Somebody from England wrote me. Instead with the eight salad for the, for
whole week and they measure themselves at the end of the week and they actually
gained a little bit of weight and they said forget salad I'm going back to the
British diet which allow as you know but is not the most healthy diet in the
world. Now what these person was doing, he was
running the experiment for way too short, I week is not enough.
He didn't see the effect. Maybe also his body was rebelling against
all the salad. He didn't have the effect.
And because of that he made conclusions about the long term.
So one key element is to say how do we not just run experiments but run them for
long enough that you would actually get useful data.
And that's even more complex. >> Alright.
We'll have to do that. Thank you so much for joining me today
and answering that question and all the questions today,
>> Thank you for doing this. I appreciate this.
>> Yeah of course. >> Very good.
So bye bye.
[NOISE]