Decisions, Decisions

Not What to Decide, but How

Dan Goldstein is Assistant Professor at London Business School and Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo! Research. See full bio

May 28, 2008

How good are you at finding what's best? Test your intution and brains.

Good decision makers often wind up with the best things available. But how do they do they do it? Finding the best thing involves searching, but it also involves knowing when to stop searching. How good a searcher are you? Do you search too much, or just the right amount? Play this little game and find out.

May 21, 2008

Major Choice Strategies

Reid Hastie and Robyn M. Dawes, in their classic Rational Choice in an Uncertain World (pp. 232-234), outline some "major choice strategies," stemming from several schools including the Heuristics and Biases, Adaptive Decision Maker, and Fast and Frugal research programs. Read More

March 24, 2008

Hillary and the snipers

We've all seen the video: Hillary tells tales of landing under sniper fire. Some, for instance the trusted authorities who upload things to YouTube are calling it a lie. But is Hillary lying? Read More

March 17, 2008

A tale of two selves

Psychologists and economists love to talk about the notion of two selves: present self and future self. On Sunday, future self might want to go to bed early on Thursday, wake up early on Friday, and hit the gym where it will listen to one hour of "Listen-and-repeat Italian" lessons while mastering the StairMaster. On Friday morning, this voice is nowhere to be heard. Read More

Behavioral Economics Basics

Why do we often think we know what we want, only to be disappointed with our purchases and choices? Behavioral economics studies just how irrational we humans can be.

Go to the Behavioral Economics Basics page for more on Behavioral Economics including:

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