There Are Free Lunches

Behavioral clues to a happy life.

Diogo Gonçalves

Designing for the Human Brain

Applying these behavioral principles will allow companies to design for usability and understanding, and to discover a new competitive edge.

What is the Design Pattern of Engaging Products?

Products we find most engaging have a basic design pattern called a hook, experiences that connect users’ problems to a product with enough frequency to form a habit.

Paul Dolan, and the Happiness by Design App

Paul Dolan, created an app to help us to focus on experiences of happiness.

Behavioral Science Improves Online Advertising

Consumers are more receptive to certain behavioral tricks.

2084: Digital Choice Curation for a Non-Orwellian Economy

Understanding online decision making can help us overcome society's choice paradoxes, and help us deal with the Age of Big Data.

The Snake, the Dog and the Calculator

Online behavior: To persuade someone of something we need to target the three layers of the brain.

Online Behavior and Disfluency: The Ugliness Payoff

When it comes to the digital world, it seems that “making it difficult” might also be the right way to help people do the right thing.

How I Taught Prospect Theory to My Son

Dear Son, Today I want to talk to you about how people make decisions. Many choices in our lives have uncertain outcomes. Choosing between two alternatives often involves a risk, such as whether you should spend your birthday money on a new bicycle or on a PlayStation.

What Makes Us Tick?

They met in a airport because of a book that one of them was reading, the same the other had recently read. The conversation was so stimulating that they decided to continue it online and share it with their readers. They both believe this will be the first of an endless series of talks about the subject—what makes people tick—that tickles them the most.

Neoliberalism Viewed From the Couch

Paul Verhaeghe is a psychoanalyst and writer. That wouldn’t make him exceptionally different from other psychotherapists if his last book wasn’t about Economics, but it is. Economics? Well, to be more precise, the book is about the current western socio-economic system—Neo-liberalism—and the effect it is having on our minds and bodies.

Behavioral Science and Development Economics

If governments adapt to, instead of resisting, individual bias in decision-making, they can, through small, low-cost, but powerful actions, enable people to make decisions and behave in ways that will lead to their longer term well-being. The WDR15 is a very important contribution that signifies a changed reality is not so far away.

Why is Behavioral Economics so Revolutionary?

Systematic discrepancies between decision utility and experienced utility, as research in the field of behavioral decision theory has been shown, question on the idea that observed choices provide a direct measure of utility, and is revolutionizing the way we look at society and policy.

An Indian Economist in Bhutan: The Kingdom of Happiness

Vatsalya Srivastava is an Indian Professor who is studying Finances in the University of Tilburg – Holland. He was my colleague in the course of Behavioral Economics. When in one class, we were discussing the Economics of Happiness, I understood he had been in Bhutan, and couldn’t resist inviting him for an interview.

Happiness: The "Science" Behind the Free Lunch

Economic indicators have been very important in the last decade, where our material needs haven't been completely satisfied, and our well-being has been closely related to the fulfillment of those needs.

Preferences and Price, or Price and Preferences?

Five recent studies gather evidence that challenges a fundamental assumption in economics: that preferences determine prices but are independent from them.

What If Value Is Constructed?

What if value is subjective? Challenging markets and voluntary trade as instruments of welfare.

Increasing Utility, Decreasing Subjective Experience

When we are making decisions about a social problem, we should consider not only the technological and economic dimensions of the problem, but also the psychological ones. The Sweet Spot, would be the decision that optimizes the three.

Philosopher Alain de Botton on "Status Anxiety"

Alain de Botton, the most-read philosopher alive, answered some questions about his wonderful book “Status Anxiety," which focused on the anxiety prevalent in many modern societies to be Number One.

Telling the Truth, Repeating a Lie

Believing in a self-interested model of humanity can be partial and incomplete, but even more disturbing it can also bring to surface the worst in us, contributing to a more selfish social environment.

What Adam Smith Forgot

Adam Smith created one of the most famous ideas in economics. The brilliant Scottish economist called his idea The Invisible Hand and through its creation removed from our minds the fear of free markets theory, making people believe that the best way to regulation is self-regulation.

Self-Regulation: Consumer Non-Behavior

What is self-regulation? Self-regulation is synonymous with individual inhibition of an automatic behavior of future negative consequences, through a self-control process. Its study was initiated during the '60s by Walter Mischel, through the now famous "Marsmallow Test."

The Honesty Bar

Pay-what-you-can pricing can be a good instrument to deal with the tensions between altruistic and egoistic economic behavior.