Tag: Behavioral

Sarah Silverman — Stop Telling Girls They Can Be Anything They Want

 

While I was listening to Hi! Bob on Audible, one of the scenes involved Sarah Silverman and Bob Newhart discussing stand up comedy. The clip in the chapter comes from Silverman’s set entitled, “We Are Miracles” and discusses the impact of priming on young women. Telling people they can be anything they want can possible introduce issues they maybe never thought were issues before. How we talk to young women often plays a role in future human capital acquisition and may lead to a form of subtle human capital discrimination.

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Star Trek TNG — Data Overanalyzes

 

Data is trying to formulate a battle plan for Commander Riker, but he’s assuming that Commander Riker is rational and knows that Data has analyzed his move. Data takes it a step further and hypothesizes that Commander Riker knows that Data knows that the commander has a battle plan. Full information is a tough assumption about rationality, but bounded rationality lets us assume that people have limitations but still respond to incentives in a predictable way. While perhaps a human failure, most of society does not operate on the same level as Data.

Thanks to Peter Nencka for the clip suggestion!

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Life in Pieces — Thank You Cards

 

Colleen and Matt are back from their wedding, but they haven’t written any thank you cards. Joan tries to drop hints by buying them thank you cards, but now she’s gotten to the point of just telling them they need to write thank you cards. Colleen realizes they need to do this because they want gifts later for their baby shower. This self-interest has sparked an idea! While it may be fair to write each person an individual card, Colleen and Matt realize it’s much more efficient to make a thank you video that people can share. The gesture isn’t well received at brunch. Often, improvements in efficiency (in this case making a video and saving the couple time) come at the cost of equity (many family members feel this isn’t fair).

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Broad City — Social Cause Drinking

 

The girls go out drinking at a new bar that focuses on large social causes, like childhood hunger and sex trafficking. From a behavioral standpoint, highlighting the important of social causes can cause people to pay more for their goods and services because they feel like they are making a bigger impact. The girls aren’t as impressed with the framing.

Thanks to Alex Witowski from Course Hero for the reference

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Qwest Communications — Free Wifi

People will go to great lengths to get “free” wifi even though they may not realize the cost associated with the decision. In this commercial for Qwest Communication, they try to offer wifi where people actually want to go.

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M&Ms — What are Caramel M&M’s worth to you?

 

 

In this commercial for the new caramel M&M’s, our grocery store employee is trying to buy back M&Ms from customers as they’re leaving the store. The employee offers $2, $3, and his watch to get the M&Ms back even though the customers could easily go through the line again and get a new bag. People tend to value items they possess at a higher rate than they actually paid for them and this action appears irrational since the transaction costs of buying another pack is already low.

Thanks to James Tierney for actually watching the commercials on Hulu:

 

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Life in Pieces — Is it time for a second child?

Greg and Jen set an alarm for Valentine’s Day to try and have a second child. The year before, they had just had Lark and decided to try and make sure their children were 2 years apart. Now that the time has come, the two are having second thoughts about whether they are ready since the original reminder was made in a pre-Lark (their child) world. Our decisions from one time period to the next are often not in agreement with one another and cause us to appear to perform irrationally.

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Curb Your Enthusiasm — Anonymous Donations

Larry David makes a large donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group, but Larry is quickly upstaged by an anonymous donation that he finds out is made by Ted Danson. Larry felt like he was doing a great thing by donating to the fund, but felt it was a truly altruistic donation. He believes the anonymous donation by Ted Danson is a better deal because anonymous donors get more recognition for appearing to not care about the recognition, even though they go around telling people they were the anonymous donor.

Thanks to Nautilus and Moblab for the clip suggestions:

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Brooklyn 99 — Wine Drink as a Gift

 

The squad is invited over to the Captain’s house for a birthday party,  and they all have the same idea when it comes to wine. While Jake wants to try to impress the captain with the finest bottle of wine, he’s a little out of the price range and settles for an $8 bottle of wine. Come to find out, the entire squad buys the same bottle of “wine drink” and Kevin isn’t too fond of their selection.

While it isn’t clear that there is much of a difference between cheap and expensive wine, “wine drink” probably doesn’t send the best signal of quality.

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Brooklyn 99 — Risk Aversion in Air Travel

 

Boyle is going on a singles cruise and isn’t sure when to arrive at the airport. He approaches Gina with the idea of getting to the airport 5 hours early for a domestic flight (which is already too much!), but she tries to convince him he actually needs to be there 8 hours. Some people prefer to arrive at the airport extra early because they are scared they will miss their flight, but most people don’t need to arrive more than 2 hours. Later in the episode, we learn that Boyle missed his flight because of an assignment, but that he actually bought a backup flight just in case he missed it. This is perhaps an extreme version of risk aversion.

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