John receives an XXL shirt as a child, which was pretty useless to him. His mom suggests that he use it as a sleep shirt, but he really wants to make a comment to the person who gave him the gift. His mom explains that it’s rude to make comments about people who give your gifts, but John is quick to notice that the inefficiencies of receiving gifts that aren’t really usable.
One of the fun topics of decision making is to ask students if they have ever been stuck in a relationship they weren’t happy with, but they continued dating that person anyway. The most common response to why this occurs is that the students have invested a lot of time in the relationship and they don’t want to see it wasted. This example is an introduction to the irrational decision making people often go through because of their resiliancy to focus on sunk costs when they should be ignored. Kyle and Kehlani’s new song goes through the same tough decision because both feel like they’re being played with. Kyle and Kehlani both ask:
Girl, why are you playin’ with me?
I don’t got the time for that
Might need me a refund, haha
I’ma need that time back
Since neither can get their time back, if they are unhappy or anticipate being unhappy in the future, they should rationally move on from each other.
I like to use Old Domion’s song, Break Up With Him for the same lesson as well.
Dottie decides to quit right before the World Series, and her coach isn’t too happy about it. One of the most salient topics taught in a section on behavioral economics is the idea of ignoring sunk costs. When things get boring or tough, a rational agent may decide to quit. Dugan believes that baseball is a great separating equilibrium and that it shows who’s tough and who isn’t. If baseball were an easy game then the it wouldn’t be a beneficial signal to everyone watching.
Thanks to Jose Fernandez for the reference!
Sheldon weighs the pros and cons of buying one gaming system over the other. He quickly realizes that whichever system he buys means that he won’t be able to get the other system. The opportunity cost of a decision is the value of the next best alternative, but sometimes when two items are closely related it means the buyer may have some buyer’s remorse from selecting the wrong item.
In one of Seinfeld’s monologues he covers the time inconsistencies between people’s decisions late at night versus the next day. In his latest Netflix special, Jerry Before Seinfeld, goes through the bit again with some updates. While we assume people to be rational in many models, people do odd things with respect to their own-selves that they may not do if they were forward thinking. This time inconsistency creates a lot of opportunities for discussions of procrastination, overconfidence biases, and other behavioral anomalies.
If you want more economics and Seinfeld, check out YadaYadaYadaEcon.com!
Penelope wakes up from a bad, but her mother is there to comfort her. After a second, Penelope notices that her mom has makeup on despite being asleep. Her mother tells her that she goes through the process of putting makeup on each night just in case she wakes up and meets someone or if she dies in her sleep. In this context, Penelope’s mom is risk averse and undergoes a lot of costs each night “just in case.”
Thanks to Khalaf Alshammari for the clip!
The endowment effect in economics is a powerful explainer for irrationality. When people own something, they are often not willing to release an item even when someone is willing to pay more than it’s valued at. One of the famous examples is the coffee mug experiment. In this episode of Impractical Jokers, the guys head to an auction house and have one of them act like a remorseful seller who isn’t ready to part with their belongings. After pissing off the auction house members, the joker isn’t willing to buy his own tires back, which his friends submit to the auction house.
Thanks to Alyssa Lampros for the submission!
Chris Rock discusses his recent divorces and encourages couples in love to make sure they hold tight to one another. He does warn that if you’re thinking about leaving then you should probably leave immediately, perhaps after the show. A lot of people stay in relationships they don’t like being in because they’ve been together for so long, but that’s just irrational!
Matt isn’t the best at giving gifts and he’s realizing that this year. Matt gives his wife a homemade coupon book that she decides to finally cash in to show him how awful the gifts are. After a while he doesn’t work as hard, but then at family dinner he finds out that no one really appreciates his gifts because it doesn’t seem like he puts much thought into them. There is a small line about positive externalities because Jen got a flu shot for her birthday once, which her husbands announces was “the gift that keeps on giving.”
Life in pieces also has another great clip on opportunity cost that’s worth checking out!
The Dunning-Kruger effect is an interesting psychological theory that looks at why novices tend to overrate their abilities and even rate themselves on par with experts. This mindset has real implications for decision making because overconfidence made lead us to make suboptimal choices.