Quotes About Behavior

What this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing.

people's choices are pervasively influenced by the design elements selected by choice architects.

That does not mean something is wrong with us as humans, but it does mean that our understanding of human behavior can be improved by appreciating how people systematically go wrong.

The money that has recently been won is called "house money" because in gambling parlance the casino is referred to as the house. Betting some of the money that you have just won is referred to as "gambling with the house's money," as if it were, somehow, different from some other kind of money. Experimental evidence reveals that people are more willing to gamble with money that they consider house money.

The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else.

The nudge provided by asking people what they intend to do can be accentuated by asking them when and how they plan to do it. This

we will see, loss aversion operates as a kind of cognitive nudge, pressing us not to make changes, even when

It follows that either desirable or undesirable behavior can be increased, at least to some extent, by drawing public attention to what others are doing. (Note to political parties: If you would like to increase turnout, please do not lament the large numbers of people who fail to vote.)*

It turns out that if you ask people, the day before the election, whether they intend to vote, you can increase the probability of their voting by as much as 25 percent!

If private companies or public officials think that one policy produces better outcomes, they can greatly influence the outcome by choosing it as the default.

Many smokers, drinkers, and overeaters are willing to pay third parties to help them make better decisions.

individual risk taking, especially in the domain of risks to life and health.

Econs do not suffer from self-control problems, and so temptation is not a word that exists in the economists' lexicon. As a result, most of the world's regulators have not thought much about the problem. But when the dessert cart comes by, we humans often cave. The next thing we know we are fat.

The distinguished economist and philosopher Amartya Sen famously called people who always give nothing in this game rational fools for blindly following only material self-interest: "The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool.

The bigger lesson is that once you understand a behavioral problem, you can sometimes invent a behavioral solution to it. Mental

it is thought to be somehow related to Adam Smith's invisible hand, the workings of which are both overstated and mysterious.

choices depend, in part, on the way in which problems are described.

Choosers are human, so designers should make life as easy as possible.

Knowing something about the cognitive system has allowed others to discover systematic biases in the way we think.

Social practices, and the laws that reflect them, often persist not because they are wise but because Humans, often suffering from self-control problems, are simply following other Humans. Inertia, procrastination, and imitation often drive our behavior. Once

This confirmed my longheld suspicion that many people use spreadsheets as an alternative to thinking.

In our understanding, a policy is "paternalistic" if it tries to influence choices in a way that will make choosers better off, as judged by themselves. 3

When in a cold state, we do not appreciate how much our desires and our behavior will be altered when we are "under the influence

For most of us, however, self-control issues arise because we underestimate the effect of arousal.