Are we in control of our decisions?

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

Behavioral Economics Introduction

Standard Economics vs. Behavioral Economics 




Visual and decision illusions






 

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it's OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we're predictably irrational -- and can be influenced in ways we can't grasp.

 

 Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely Introduction From Injury to Behavioral Economics

  


Predictably Irrational Chapter 1 - Everything is Relative  

Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely Chapter 2 Supply and Demand?  

Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely Chapter 3 The Cost of Zero  

Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely Chapter 4 The Cost of Social Norms 

Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely Chapter 5 The Influence of Arousal 

Chapter 6 The Problem of Procrastination 

Chapter 7: The High Price of Ownership

 Chapter 8: Keeping doors open

 

Chapter 9: The effect of expectations

 Chapter 10: The power of price

Chapters 11 and 12: The context of our character

Chapter 13: What is behavioral economics?

First Decisions Matter a Lot

The Temptation of Free

Social vs. Financial Exchanges

We Don't Recognize Ourselves

Self-Control Mechanisms

 

 

High Cost of Attachment

 

Keeping Options Open

Expectations Color Experiences

You Get What You Pay For

Dishonesty: Everyone Cheats a Little Bit

The promise of Behavioral Economics

Preschoolers and Nature vs. Nurture

With affection and humour, parents, caregivers and childcare experts discuss raising the young jungle animals known as preschoolers.

The topic: Preschoolers and Nature vs. Nurture


Nature endows us with inborn abilities and traits; nurture takes these genetic tendencies and molds them as we learn and mature.

Researchers agree that the link between a gene and a behavior is not the same as cause and effect. While a gene may increase the likelihood that you'll behave in a particular way, it does not make people do things. Which means that we still get to choose who we'll be when we grow up.

Question: What would be your favourite example to illustrate nature via nurture?

Answer: My favourite is a study from Dunedin, New Zealand, conducted between 1972 and 1973. Researcher Terrie Moffitt and her colleagues investigated differences in the promoter (or 'switch') region of the brain's serotonin transporter gene which can affect the way people react to stressful life events – things like divorce or bereavement. (Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a chemical 'messenger' that allows communication between nerve cells.)

The study found that people with one or two copies of the short version of the serotonin promoter showed more symptoms of depression following at least three stressful life events than people with two copies of the long version. For one or two events there was no difference.

In other words, your genome does not make you depressed, but makes you more susceptible to environmental pressures; in this case it makes you more likely to be depressed when you suffer several external setbacks. And that has to be how things like intelligence are determined. A clever person is not born clever, they're born more able to take in teaching, they're born capable of learning.

So it's not a gene for intelligence, it's a gene for learning. A tennis player or scholar may not have been much better at tennis or study to start with, but was innately drawn to doing a lot of tennis or study and practice that made him or her perfect. So the nature sought out the nurture.

Katherine Fulton: You are the future of philanthropy

President of Monitor Institute, Katherine Fulton is also a strategist, author, teacher and speaker working for social change.

Katherine Fulton sketches the new future of philanthropy -- one where collaboration and innovation allow regular people to do big things, even when money is scarce. Giving five practical examples of crowd-driven philanthropy, she calls for a new generation of citizen leaders

Billions of dollars are spent on philanthropy each year, but the way they are spent is changing rapidly. Katherine Fulton’s team at Monitor Group has been tracking these changes, and she has become an eloquent advocate for the “New Philanthropy,” surprising audiences with her insights on an underreported phenomenon of momentous significance.



As president of Monitor Institute, she works with today’s most imaginative, entrepreneurial leaders (not just in philanthropy, but also in business and government) to pioneer breakthrough next practices in how complex social problems are framed, confronted, funded and ultimately solved.



As a result of her efforts, she has been awarded both a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and a Lyndhurst Foundation prize for community service. Her innovative course design at Duke University was featured in Time magazine and her work on the future of journalism in Columbia Journalism Review. She is also co-author of several books, among them Investing for Social and Environmental Impact: A Blueprint for Catalyzing an Emerging Industry, Looking Out for the Future: An Orientation for Twenty-First Century Philanthropists and What If? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits.
 

Geoff Mulgan: Post-crash, investing in a better world

The Young Foundation and Geoff Mulgan have published a number of reports and books on social innovation, public sector innovation and public strategy. They are also working actively on recession responses.

Previously he was:

• Director of Policy at 10 Downing Street (under British Prime Minister Tony Blair)
  

• Director of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (formerly known as the Performance and Innovation Unit)
  

• Co-founder and Director of the London based think tank Demos (from 1993-98)
  

• Chief adviser to Gordon Brown MP in the early 1990s
  

He has written a number of books including:

• Communication and Control:networks and the new economies of communication (1991),
• Politics in an Anti-Political Age (1994),
  
• Connexity (1997) and
  
• Good and Bad Power: the Ideals and Betrayals of Government (Penguin 2006).
  

He has written numerous Demos reports and pamphlets.

His current base, the Young Foundation, mainly works on social innovation - design and launch of new social organisations, but also produces some publications, including recent ones on social innovation and the state of British society.

 He has lectured and advised governments around the world on policy and strategy - including China, Australia, the United States, Japan and Russia.

He is profiled in two books - The New Alchemists (1999 by Charles Handy) and Visionaries (2001 by Jay Walljasper). He is a trustee of the Design Council and the Work Foundation.

Geoff Mulgan (born 1961) is director of the Young Foundation based in London and Visiting Professor at University College, London, the London School of Economics and University of Melbourne as well as being the chair of Involve.

He obtained his Ph.D. in telecommunications from the University of Westminster. He was a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained a First Class degree from Balliol College, Oxford. Mulgan was also trained as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka , but instead worked in local government and academia in the UK, and became an influential writer on social and political issues in various newspapers and magazines in the 1990s. He was made a CBE in 2005.

Geoff Mulgan poses a question:

Instead of sending bailout money to doomed old industries, why not use stimulus funds to bootstrap some new, socially responsible companies -- and make the world a little bit better?