Of Bottles and Mugs

Have you ever noticed how much some of the things you own mean to you? That old watch you inherited from your grandpa, those Nike sneakers you just bought last week, or maybe that beat-up car you've been driving around with for years now. For how much would you be willing to sell these items? Or maybe you wouldn't sell them at all?

When the now famous American economist Richard Thaler was just a graduate student, he noticed some very irrational and "un-economic" behavior in one of his professors.

Beware The Anchor!

I'm going to assume that we all know what an anchor is. Nope, not the guy on TV, the original one. But just in case someone doesn't, I've added a picture below. An anchor makes sure that the ship it is attached to doesn't go floating off into the great, vast ocean. But anchoring doesn't just happen in naval contexts.

As Daniel Kahneman notes in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, the brain can easily be influenced by giving it an anchor:

"It is an anchoring effect. It occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity. What happens is one of the most reliable and robust results of experimental psychology: the estimates stay close to the number that people considered - hence the image of an anchor." (p. 119)

Just A Few Snippets

When I'm reading a book I'll sometimes come across a really interesting paragraph or maybe even just a single sentence. I underline it, but I know I won't be able to produce a full post with it. Nonetheless, I'd like to share some of these interesting bits with you and as always: if you want to know more, you'll have to buy the book ;-) Which one? Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman:

A Pretty Dangerous "Sport"

Take a look at the following picture for a few seconds.

What did you read and what images popped into your head? If you're like most people you read the left part as "ABC", the right part as "121314" and you pictured Ann heading to the building of a financial institution. Now look at it again.

You may just as well have read the first part as "A13C" and thought of Ann floating around in a canoe on a river. How come you didn't?

Looking for Books?

Some of you may have been wondering where I get all these wonderful and interesting books from. You don't have to wonder any longer. :-)

I discovered The Book Depository about 2 years ago and have been a regular customer ever since. They have a huge collection of books in the English language for reasonable prices and the best part: shipping is free, worldwide! So it doesn't matter if you're in Canada, Congo or Cambodia, you can order your books straight from their website. Just click on the image below and start reading more... Seriously, you need to start reading more ;-)

The Power of a Smile

Most of us like to think that we're pretty independent and rational beings: the decisions we make are not dependent on the people who surround us, nor are they influenced by the things that we're confronted with in our day-to-day lives. But if you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll probably agree with me that nothing could be further from the truth. It seems as if everything has an influence on us...

I've recently started reading a fascinating book by Daniel Kahneman entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow (which you can get here). Generally speaking, it's about the two ways of thinking every human engages in: The more intuitive thinking which happens very fast (what Kahneman calls System 1) and the slower, more in-depth thinking (System 2) with which we try to keep System 1 in check (at least sometimes). The interesting thing is how System 1 can be manipulated, a process called priming. Here's Kahneman's explanation: