The psychology behind irrational decisions - Sara Garofalo

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View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-psychology-behind-irrational-decisions-sara-garofalo

Often people make decisions that are not “rational” from a purely economical point of view — meaning that they don’t necessarily lead to the best result. Why is that? Are we just bad at dealing with numbers and odds? Or is there a psychological mechanism behind it? Sara Garofalo explains heuristics, problem-solving approaches based on previous experience and intuition rather than analysis.

Lesson by Sara Garofalo, animation by TOGETHER.
eric3579says...

The problem i have with the first problem is not one of statistics or odds but one of your financial situation. If you played the game with ten cents i'm sure it wouldn't work out the same as if you played with a thousand dollars or even more extreme a million. The larger the value to one personally the less chance you will take losing it. In the end keeping a large amount of money even if the odds of doubling it are much better is completely a rational decision when it makes a difference in your life. What odds would you need to double all you had opposed to losing it all. I would call your choice very rational and analytic regardless of odds.

You need an extremely controlled situation to see if there is a bias and what it might be. I'm guessing i could manipulate the outcomes easily with the choice of participants and the amount of money involved.

oritteroposays...

That actually sounds like an interesting experiment

eric3579said:

The problem i have with the first problem is not one of statistics or odds but one of your financial situation. If you played the game with ten cents i'm sure it wouldn't work out the same as if you played with a thousand dollars or even more extreme a million. The larger the value to one personally the less chance you will take losing it. In the end keeping a large amount of money even if the odds of doubling it are much better is completely a rational decision when it makes a difference in your life. What odds would you need to double all you had opposed to losing it all. I would call your choice very rational and analytic regardless of odds.

You need an extremely controlled situation to see if there is a bias and what it might be. I'm guessing i could manipulate the outcomes easily with the choice of participants and the amount of money involved.

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