
Customer decision making behaviours that are consistently irrational - instakill
http://thegrinch.posterous.com/top-decision-making-behaviours-that-are-consi#
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jdp23
It's a good list of counter-intuitive behaviors. That said classifying them as
"irrational" is an over-simplification. When you take the individual and
situation into account, these are often very rational behaviors. People have
different utility functions, cost/benefit tradeoffs, and approaches to
maximization.

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bellaire
A utility function or cost/benefit tradeoff isn't a matter of opinion. If your
situation and available information dictates that a certain decision is
rational, then we aren't talking about you.

The whole point is that, given a concrete, rational analysis of any particular
situation, studies show that people have cognitive biases which induce them to
select the wrong choice. The examples given are some of the more popular ones.

It's not just a matter of people using different mathematical models. Decision
making is an inherently emotive process, and pretending human beings are, on
the whole, totally rational decision makers is a fantasy. That said, we are
perfectly capable of making rational decisions if we are trained how to do so
and disciplined enough to follow through, but the power of cognitive biases
should not be understated.

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jdp23
> A utility function or cost/benefit tradeoff isn't a matter of opinion.

Well, they're both contextual and subjective; different people looking at the
same utility function or tradeoffs will come to different conclusions. Maybe
we mean something different by 'matter of opinion'.

> studies show that people have cognitive biases which induce them to select
> the wrong choice.

Studies (done by people with specific cognitive biases according to
conventions defined by people with specific cognitive biases) show that
participants make choices that they authors of the studies consider "wrong" or
"suboptimal". As you say, the power of cognitive biases should not be
understated.

