i

actually a little bit about the irrational behaviour not use of course other people's

so after being committee for a for a few years the realise that the right

and then we could papers is not the that exciting you know i don't know

how many of those you read but

it's not fun to read and often not for interactive and was to right

so decide to try and write something a more final

in i a came up with an idea that i write the cookbook

in the type of form a cookbook was going to be dining without from the

other three tingles a distinct

then it was going to be look at life through the kitchen that was quite

excited about this is going to talk about the little that the but research a

little bit about the kitchen you know we do so much from the kitchen i

thought this would be interesting and i wrote a couple of chapters and i two

key to mit press and they said you know cute but not for us going

to find somebody else

i tried that the people and everybody said the same thing executes

not for us an internal somebody said

look if you serious about these you first have to write the book about your

research you have to but something and then you'll get the opportunity to write something

else if you really want to do you have to do it so i stimuli

we don't want to write about my research i do this all day long i

want to write something else something be more free less constrained

in this a person was very and force fluency look that's the only way you'll

have to do it so set okay if i have to do it either sabbatical

a set of rights about my research of does not away and then only to

do my cookbook so wrote the

a book and my research

time to be quite fine in two ways first of all i enjoyed

writing but the more interesting thing was that i start learning from people

different time to write because the so much feedback you can get some people write

me about the personal experience in about the of examples and what we disagree and

nuances anything being here i mean the last two days that i've known really high

so say obsessive behaviour i never i

which i think it just fascinated i will tell you a little bit about irrational

behaviour and i want to start by giving a some examples of visual illusion is

a metaphor for rationality still think about these two tables and you must have seen

disillusion you fast you want longer the vertical line of table on the last or

the horizontal line on the table on the right

which one scenes longer

can anybody see anything but the last one being longer no right is impossible at

the next thing about visually chinese we can easily demonstrate mistakes second put some lines

on all doesn't help i can i think make the lines into the extent you

believe me again shrink the lines which i didn't i proving to you met your

eyes more

deceiving you

no the interesting thing about this is gonna take the lines away

it's as if you haven't learned anything in the last minute click on

you can't look at this instead of being now i see reality as it is

right it impossible to overcome this

sense that this is indeed longer our intuition is really folding as in the repeatable

predictable consistent while is almost nothing we can do about it aside from taking a

ruler and starting to measurement

is another one is one of my favourite illusion what do you see the colour

that the top airways pointing to

braun thank you the bottom one

yellow turns out to identical

can anybody see them as identical very high i can cover the rest of the

cube at twenty five cover the rest of the cube you can see that are

identical

and if you don't believe me you can get the slightly to induce arts and

craft and see that there are identical

but again it's the same story that if we take the background the way the

illusion comes back

this is no way for us know to see

this solution i guess maybe if you colourblind i don't think you can see that

i want to think about the illusion is a metaphor you know vision is one

of the best thing we do we have a huge part of a brain dedicate

division bigger than the to get to anything else we do more vision more hours

of the day than we do anything else and what follows are designed to do

vision and if we have is predictable repeatable mistakes envisioning which was so that

what's the chance that we don't make even more mistaken something would not as good

or

for example financial decision making

something we don't have an evolutionary reason to do we don't have a special is

part of the brain and we don't do that many hours of the day and

the argument is that on those cases it might be the issue that we actually

make many more mistakes

in worse not have an easy way to see them because in visual illusions we

condition we demonstrate the mistakes in cognitive illusion it's much harder to demonstrate the people

the mistakes

so i want to show some cognitive illusion the decision making lose in the same

in the same way

and this is one of my favourite plot in social sciences it's from paper by

johnson goals teen and it basically shows the percentage of people who indicated that would

be interested in giving the organs to the nation

and the different countries in europe and you basically c two types of countries

countries on the right that seems to be giving a lot

and countries on the left it seems to be

giving very little

not much less

that is why the some countries develop in some countries give

but it

we ask people this question the usually think that it has to be something about

culture right how much you care about people

giving you organs to somebody else's probably about how much you care about society

howling two or maybe "'cause" about religion

but if you look at this plot

you could see that counts is that we think about this very similar

actually exhibit very different behavior

for example sweden is all the way on the right and then the market we

think is culturally very similar is all the way on the left

germany's on the left and austria

is on the right

the netherlands on the left and belgium is on the right and finally depending on

your particular version of the european similar to you can think about the ukraine in

french is either similar culturally or not

but it turns out that from organ donation directly from

but only the middle one is an interesting stories of the netherlands kind of the

biggest of the small group

turns out to be got to twenty eight percent

i the mailing every household in the country a letter begging people to jointly salt

intonation proper

but you know the expression begging only get two so far

twenty eight percent in organ donation

but look at the countries on the right to do in the doing a much

better job beanbag so what are they doing

turns out to see could has to do with the formant the d and v

and here's the story the countries on the left

how the former that the mv that looks something like this check the box below

if you want to participate in the organ donor program

in what happens

people don't check

and they don't john

the countries and the right you want to give a lot had a slightly different

form

uses check the box below if you don't want to participate

interestingly enough when people get this data again don't check but now examine

the problem

no i think about what addition

you know we wake up in the morning and we feel we make decisions we

wake up in the morning and we open the closet in we feel that we

decide what where we open the refrigerator enfolded we decide what to eat

in what is actually saying that much of these decisions are not residing would you

notice that resigning by the person who's designing that for

when you walk into the mv the price of the design deformable have but influence

one what you end up doing

note also verified to into it is results

think about it for yourself how many of you believe that if you want to

renew your license to moral and you want to the d m v and you

would encounter one of these forms that would actually change one behavior

very how to think it will influence aspect we can see all these fun europeans

of course it would be influenced number when it comes to ask

we have such a feeling that would drive the seat with such as train it

will rent control and we are making the decision that it is very high even

except the idea that we actually have an illusion of making a decision rather than

actual decision

no

you might say

you know the decisions we don't care about in fact by definition these a decision

about something that will happen to us that we do how do we care about

something less than have something that happens after we die

so it's standard economist somebody believing rationality would say you know what the cost of

free listing the pencil and marking of the is higher than the possible benefit of

the decision so that's why we get this affect

in fact

it's not because it's easy it's not because it's trivial it's not because we don't

care it's the opposite

it's because we care it's difficult and its complex

and it's a complex it we don't know what to do

and because we have no idea what to do we just pick whatever it was

chosen for us

maybe one more example for this is from a paper by rather might interfere

and they said

with this effect also happens to experts people will pay experts in the decisions do

it a lot and the basically took a group of physicians

and they presented in the case study of the patient and the set his the

patient is a sixty seven year old former is been suffering from the right a

pain for awhile and then they said to the physician yes any decided a few

weeks ago that nothing is working for these patient implications nothing seems to be working

so you refer the patient to hip replacement therapy

"'kay" hip replacement okay so the patient is on the path of happy soup replaced

and then sent have a physician the thing yesterday

you review the patient's case and you realise and you forgot to try what medication

you did not try ibuprofen

if you put patient back and try preprocessing module it can go and have hip

replaced

well the good news is that most physician in this case you started to pull

the patient in try ibuprofen

very good for the physicians

the loop of the physician they said yesterday when you review the case you discover

do with communication in trial

ibuprofen in pure oxygen this idea to indication each row it what you do you

like well you put them back and if you put them directly try i we

propose an approach to can which one

no i think of with this decision

makes it easy to let the patient continue with a hip replacement but telling them

but also some becomes more complex

this one more decision

what happens now

majority of the physicians now to select the patient go to get perplexing

i don't this war is you by the way

when you go to see a physician

the thing is that no physician ever say he brought so can i be prof

and hip replacement let's go for keep replacing but the model like you said this

is the default it has the used car on whatever people and up to

maybe a couple of more examples of you rational decision making

imagine i give you chose

you want to go for we can roll all expenses paid hotel transportation food

breakfast a continental breakfast everything

or we can in paris now we can in paris we can enrol is a

different things they are different for different culture different art

noting that i acted the short to the set that nobody wanted

but i say that we can enrol

we can in paris

well having a car stolen

it's a funny a because why would having your car stolen in this influence anything

but to one option to have your car stolen was not exactly like this

what if it was a trip to roll all expenses paid transportation

breakfast

we conclude coffee in the morning if you will cost you have to pay for

yourself it's two euros fifty

no in some ways

given that you can have run with coffee why would you possibly want run with

a coffee it's like having a constellation inferior option

but guess what happens

the moment to a wrong without coffee run with coffee become more popular

in people choose

the fact that have role with a coffee make strong we coffee looks superior in

not just to run without coffee events appear to paris

two examples of this principle

this was a natural economist a few years ago

that gave us three choices

and all that a subscription for fifty nine dollars a print subscription four hundred twenty

five

or it could get about four hundred twenty five

but it is and i called up economist and i tried to figure out what

they think

and they passed me for one person to another to another

a until eventually i got to the first person who's in charge of the website

and i call them up and they went to check what was going on in

the next thing i know the at his girl and no explanation

so i so i decided of the experiment that they don't of the beloved economies

to do with me i took this i gave it will have an mit students

i said what would you chose a need of them are feature

most people want to the comedy or

thankfully nobody wanted the dominated option that means of students can read

now if you have an option that nobody wants

you take it off

right so it took like printed another version of this when i eliminated the middle

option

and i give it another hundred

students

here's what happens

and now the most popular option we cantonese proper and the least popular became the

most popular

what was happening is that option that was useless

in the middle

was used as in the sense that nobody wanted

but it wasn't uses in a sentence help people figure out what they wanted

in fact

relative to the option in the middle

which was

and get only the print four hundred twenty five the print waveform and that means

that looks like a fantastic deal

in as a consequence people chosen

the general idea here by the way that we actually don't know what preferences that

well and because we don't know preferences that well what susceptible to all of these

influences from the external forces the defaults

their particular option that are presented words and so on

one more example of this

that people believe that when we deal with physical attraction we see somebody and we

know immediately what do we like them or not attracted on all this is what

we have these phenomena dates and so i decided on these experiment we'd people i'll

show you graphic images of people not real people the experiment was would people

i showed some people picture of palm

and picture of areas and you want to day call

jerry

but for the people i didn't ugly version of jerry

i two for the shop and i major area

slightly less attractive

the people i didn't come

and the question was well as jerry an ugly don't help

the respective the more attractive brothers

and the answer was absolutely s

what ugly jerry was around jerry was popular when only time was around thomas

this of course is to a very clear implications for the for life in general

if you have a go bar hopping could you want to take what you

you want

you want this like the audio version of yourself

similar but slightly uglier

and the second point of course is that if somebody else invites you know how

they think about you

what is the general point a general point is that when we think about economics

we have this beautiful view of human nature

what the piece of work is mannheim noble in reason we have these idiots of

ourselves of others

that the cable economics perspective is slightly less

generous to people in fact being medical terms that's the our view

but there is a silver lining

and the silver lining is i think kind of the reason the behavior economics is

interesting and exciting

you know how we superman or we homer simpson

when it comes to building the physical world and

we can understand or limitation

so we build steps and we build these things about everybody can use obviously but

we build them

we understand or limitations and we build around it

but for some reason when it comes to the mental world when we design things

like health care and requirement in stock market we somehow forget the idea that were

limited and i think it's we on this to the cognitive limitations

in the same way that we understand of physical limitation examples there was in the

face in the same way we could design a better world and that i think

is the hope of these things