Most of us don’t like it when others make decisions for us — we prefer to make our own choices. But even when we do make decisions autonomously, sometimes it is as if the process is being hijacked. — Imagine you’re visiting a new restaurant in town that is all the buzz. As you are shown to a table, you are given a menu, but unfortunately it is not quite clear which dishes are vegetarian, which are gluten free and so on. You beckon a server and tell her…

Good decision making is more about the “making” than about the “decision” — Altruism is an intriguing phenomenon. Many of us make material sacrifices in money, effort or time that benefit others, without a clear immediate material benefit to ourselves. We hold the door open for someone, or allow a driver to join a queue of traffic. We volunteer at the annual fête…

Having some expertise is definitely helpful when arguing a case, but that is not necessarily true for being convinced that you are right — Few pastries are as controversial as the British delicacy known as the scone. This is a small round cake, consumed with the clotted cream and strawberry jam as an essential part of the cream tea, popular in the southwest of England. However, aside from a trivial difference of opinion about…

We can evidently not spend an infinite amount of time on making a decision, but stopping too quickly can be no less detrimental — You have just made a decision: you chose to read this piece (and that is much appreciated!). I guess it probably didn’t take you all that long to make that decision. Despite the fact that there were, in all likelihood, numerous other things you could have opted to do instead…

Two distinct modes of moral decision making are neither limited to ethics, nor as distinct as they seem — A runaway trolley comes hurtling down a hill, and is set to kill five workers on the track. However, you are standing next to a switch that could divert the trolley to a siding, where it will kill just one lone worker. Will you pull the lever, or do nothing…

Pretty much all our problems are behavioural…but does that mean the solutions are? — Could it be that very problem humans face, individually or collectively, is a behavioural problem? It sounds a bit grandiose. But when we exclude unexpected cosmic disasters and such like, it really seems as if pretty much every problem can be reduced to people (a) not doing something they should…

… because it is rare for just one thing to be different — You may have missed (or forgotten) it during the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the end of January 2021 Britain finally left the EU, more than four years after this step was decided in a referendum. In the midst of the disruption (not least to travel) that characterized this period, the…

Does our morality have roots in an economic phenomenon? — Imagine you’re back in elementary school. It’s the birthday of one of the kids in your class — the kid who has been pestering your little brother for weeks. The bully in question approaches your desk with a bag of candy from which everyone can grab a couple of sweets…

An accidental behavioural economist takes up the defence of Homo Economicus — Are people rational, or irrational? It depends. It certainly depends on exactly what you mean by ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’. You may very well on occasion have judged someone’s choices or behaviour as irrational (maybe even your own!), without referring to a clear, agreed definition. But I suspect it is not…