What We're Reading
The Overconfidence Bias
It postulates that we inaccurately assess our ability, talent, intellect assessment of situations and predictions of the future. We are significantly more likely to be confident in ourselves, as evidenced by self reported surveys where confidence largely exceeds accuracy. Depending on the situation within which it emerges, it can cause wastage of resources and investment - forming an unreliable foundation for decision making.
Better - A Surgeon's Note on Performance
Atul Gawande's book highlights Diligence, Doing Right and Ingenuity as key factors that help surgeons (or anyone else) who wishes to do better in their lives. To me, the hero of the story was the continuing theme of mastering context. Several stories of the success such as increasing rates of handwashing among medical staff, measurement of newborn health, collecting accurate polio-related data, time and cost effective techniques adopted on the battlefield featured this hero. The knowledge and mastery of context, as described throughout the book, is a hallmark for any successful intervention, especially those that are behavioural in nature. The ability to understand why people behave they do, is the first step of any attempt that hopes to modify behaviour.
The book highlights that professionals aware of the facts often forget to heed their own advice due to the overconfidence bias, which hampers their ability to get better.
What We're Listening To
Nick Chater on why searching for your true 'self' is pointless - Core Insights: Behavioural Science
I was lucky enough to be in one of Nick's classes while at Warwick, and he brings his usual self to the first in this series of podcasts by Warwick Business School. 'The Mind is Flat' talks about the illusion of mental depth that we all believe that people have. Nick presents findings from Neuroscience that claim, however, that we are all a collection of patterns of choices that are largely improvised.
https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/core-insights-podcast-series-behavioural-science/
What We're Watching
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics by Richard Thaler
From one of the founders of Behavioural Economics - Richard Thaler. In conversation with Hal Varian, talks about the humble beginnings of the idea for Misbehaving from a column that explored economic related 'anomalies', an evolution towards an eventual paradigm shift. With a running example of tipping behaviour in context of individual motivation, culture, etc. - Thaler makes interesting observations about the anomalies in the world around us. My favourite caveat is also one of Thaler's - 'Make it Easy', which he describes in the context of automatic enrolment for 401K packages in the US but can be used in any number of situations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42qbHeFxdzE
Introducing Behaviour Labs Around The World
The Weber Lab
https://elke-u-weber.com/index.php?article_id=38
The Behavioral Science for Policy Lab cuts across three academic units at Princeton University: (a.) the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment within the School of Engineering, (b.) the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Center within the School of Public and International Affairs, and (c.) the Department of Psychology. PhD students, postdocs, and undergraduate researchers come from all three groups and also include international visitors. The physical location of the BSPL is in the Andlinger Center.
The BSPL mission is to put Weber's previous research insights about the full range of human motivation and human decisions processes into a broader context, looking at decision makers who are imbedded in social networks and their physical and social environment, who receive information and cues from those sources as well as feedback from the effect their decisions have on their environment.
Interconnection and cross-talk and fertilisation between models of human decision making and social network models and complex adaptive systems modeling.
Why are we focusing on this lab?
The upcoming COP 26 in Edinburgh, is a good time to think about the interconnected issues of energy, climate, & behaviour, and our first lab is a prime example of this.
Something for the methodologists
The notion of subjective probability in Behaviour Science, specifically finance has been shown to have a flawed premise that it is one of the two sides of probability vis-a-vis subjective, and objective probability. The numerical values assigned to decisions, and the quantified work in Behaviour Science will have to be re-thought. How do we navigate it?
