In one of the most in-depth and wide-ranging Q&A sessions held by the Freakonomics blog, Daniel Kahneman answered 22 new questions about his book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Three of the questions that caught my attention:
Q. As you found, humans will take huge, irrational risks to avoid taking a loss. Couldn’t that explain why so many Penn State administrators took the huge risk of not disclosing a sexual assault?
A. In such a case, the loss associated with bringing the scandal into the open now is large, immediate and easy to imagine, whereas the disastrous consequences of procrastination are both vague and delayed. This is probably how many cover-up attempts begin. If people were certain that cover-ups would have very bad personal consequences (as happened in this case), we may see fewer cover-ups in future. From that point of view, the decisive reaction of the board of the University is likely to have beneficial consequences down the road.
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Q. Problems in healthcare quality may be getting worse before they get better, and there are countless difficult decisions that will have to be made to ensure long-term system improvement. But on a daily basis, doctors and nurses and patients are each making a variety of decisions that shape healthcare on a smaller but more tangible level. How can the essence of Thinking, Fast and Slow be extracted and applied to the individual decisions that patients and providers make so that the quality of healthcare is optimized?
A. I don’t believe that you can expect the choices of patients and providers to change without changing the situation in which they operate. The incentives of fee-for-service are powerful, and so is the social norm that health is priceless (especially when paid for by a third party). Where the psychology of behavior change and the nudges of behavioral economics come into play is in planning for a transition to a better system. The question that must be asked is, “How can we make it easy for physicians and patients to change in the desired direction?”, which is closely related to, “Why don’t they already want the change?” Quite often, when you raise this question, you may discover that some inexpensive tweaks in the context will substantially change behavior. (For example, we know that people are more likely to pay their taxes if they believe that other people pay their taxes.)
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Q:How can I identify my incentives and values so I can create a personal program of behavioral conditioning that associates incentives with the behavior likely to achieve long-term goals?
A. The best sources I know for answers to the question are included in the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in the book Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, and in the books of the psychologist Robert Cialdini.
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