The benefits of having options are apparent with each particular decision we face, but the costs are subtle and cumulative.
The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. A satisficer...
So it seems that neither our predictions about how we will feel after an experience nor our memories of how we did feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel w...
Restricting yourself in this way may seem both difficult and arbitrary, but actually, this is the kind of discipline we exercise in other aspects of life. You may have a rule of thumb never to have mo...
Religious institutions then become a kind of market for comfort, tranquility, spirituality, and ethical reflection, and we religion consumers shop in that market until we find what we like.
Pay attention to what you’re giving up in the next-best alternative, but don’t waste energy feeling bad about having passed up an option further down the list that you wouldn’t have gotten to anyway.
Ninety percent of adults spend half their waking lives doing things they would rather not be doing at places they would rather not be.
Most good decisions will involve these steps: Figure out your goal or goals. Evaluate the importance of each goal. Array the options. Evaluate how likely each of the options is to meet your goals. Pic...
KAHNEMAN AND TVERSKY HAVE USED THEIR RESEARCH ON FRAMING and its effects to construct a general explanation of how we go about evaluating options and making decisions. They call it prospect theory.
It is called prospect theory, and it was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. What the theory claims is that evaluations are relative to a baseline. A given experience will feel positive if...
If you live in a social world, as we all do, you are always being hit with information about how others are doing.
I am not suggesting that we will always, or even frequently, be better off going with our gut when making choices. What I am suggesting is there are pitfalls to deciding after analyzing. My concern, g...
Hirsch calls goods like these positional goods, because how likely anyone is to get them depends upon his position in society.
Every choice we make is a testament to our autonomy, to our sense of self-determination. Almost every social, moral, or political philosopher in the Western tradition since Plato has placed a premium...
Certainly, it is safe to say that, based on available research, social comparison does nothing to improve one’s satisfaction with the choices one makes.
But clearly, the lesson is that incentives can be a dangerous weapon. A critic of this research might say that the problem is not incentives, but dumb incentives. No doubt, some incentives are dumber...
Both books point out how the growth of material affluence has not brought with it an increase in subjective well-being. But they go further. Both books argue that we are actually experiencing a fairly...
Being able to criticize our own certainties is often a painful struggle, demanding some courage as we try to stand back and impartially judge ourselves and our own responsibility.
As we see reversible marriages come apart, we may think to ourselves, how fortunate the couple was to have a flexible attitude toward marital commitment, given that it didn’t work out. It might not oc...
As advertising professor James Twitchell puts it, Ads are what we know about the world around us.