Monthly Archives: August 2013

As the father of two children I see it as my job to give them some appreciation of money. Also, given my work, I show them how they’re influenced by shops and manufacturers to buy particular products and, once they’ve bought them, encouraged to spend more. Something must be getting through because, just yesterday, my six year old daughter talked about her conscious and unconscious minds (she was describing her unease about performing at a large theatre with her ballet class, and being conscious of the people watching her). I remember learning about the concept of ‘opportunity cost’ when I was studying economics. Until that point I had never consciously considered spending money in terms of what I wouldn’t be able to buy if I bought a particular product at a particular cost. I don’t think that I was unusual in not thinking in economists terms naturally: if behavioural economics […]

A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house sitting chatting in his kitchen, when his 11 year old son came in and poured himself a glass of milk. In the process of pouring it from the container some splashed out of the glass and onto the worktop.  Without hesitating he flicked his hand down by his side, this caused his slightly baggy school sweatshirt to drop down to cover half his hand.  In a deft move, he grabbed the cuff so that it now covered his palm as he extended his hand back up, and he mopped the small puddle of milk with his improvised, ever-ready cloth. My immediate reaction was of slight disgust.  That cuff was going to smell pretty ghastly within a few hours.  Whilst I hoped his was a calculated act, the last use of a sweatshirt destined for the wash, I suspected by the […]

Let me say straight away that I’m not talking about wriggly things in the garden that are doing good things for soil quality. I’m referring to the measure of voter approval that is sometimes displayed during election debates. In the last UK general election we had a television debate amongst the three main party leaders for the first time. As has happened elsewhere, the broadcasters added three lines on the screen, one for each candidate, and plotted a ‘sample’ of voters satisfaction with the points being made by the politicians in real time. You might think that in something as significant as the leadership of one’s country people would be keen to make their own informed opinion. But as has been shown in numerous other studies, we can’t help but be influenced by the knowledge of what others are doing or what we believe they’re thinking. This was demonstrated in […]

In a previous article, written for this website by David Parnell, he explained that thinking burns glucose and that, it might well be beneficial for retailers to provide customers with access to a small energy boost, perhaps a mint or drink, to help them stay energised for shopping. A new study, whilst not looking at consumers, adds a new dimension to this advice and reinforces its importance for consumer behaviour. It comes from research that has been conducted looking at sentencing patterns of judges. It’s another example of the extent to which we’re nowhere near as rational as we like to tell ourselves. Much as I would like to believe that a judge’s sentence is based on an objective assessment of the facts of the case and a dispassionate application of the relevant laws and sentencing guidelines, the evidence suggests otherwise. A researcher examined more than 1000 parole board hearings […]