I blogged about Dan Ariely back in May (article here) after reading an article in the paper. I still haven’t read the book but have now listened to his Arming the Donkeys podcasts. Every week he has another one dealing with how and why people think what they do.

Here are the notes of things I found interesting.

July 2, 2008 – Jack Soll

  • Take what you are worst at and improve that
  • Small changes at the low end of things can make a big difference

August 5, 2008 – John Payne

  • Unconscious thinking is the better way to make decisions (see Blink)
  • Or is it?
  • It is certainly possible to do bad conscious thinking
  • This is often because of overthinking because you start to pay attention to irrelevant information in addition to the good stuff
  • Decisions of magnitude are good places to think about

August 11, 2008 – Alison Adcock

  • In order to learn something, be happy about it

September 2, 2008 – Stacy Wood

  • We forget the pain of having a car scratch
  • But we also also forget the joy of receiving flowers
  • What we actually remember is what we think we would feel like in those situations
  • Long wedding videos for instance are not necessarily a good thing for memories as they let you remember more about the day. Instead, just keep the happy photos as they reinforce the norm of having an enjoyable wedding day.

September 8, 2008 – Brian Elbel

  • If you present someone a list of 8 – 16 options, tehy are more likely to take the default or defer a decision to later.
  • By putting irrelevant options on the list, it forces people to think about the presented choices
  • The order of the choices counts too. If the thing people are comparing against is at the bottom of the list then people will consider the other options in more details.