Biases
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Removing Obstructions is Better Than Encouraging Change
There’s plenty of modern experimental evidence to show the importance of removing obstructing forces. For example, a 2017 study by Peter Bergman and Todd Rogers monitored the impact of friction on sign-up rates for a new educational service offering parents advice on children’s revision. The psychologists randomly assigned parents to one of three sign-up routes:
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The Ellsberg Paradox
In decision theory and economics, ambiguity aversion (also known as uncertainty aversion) is a preference for known risks over unknown risks. An ambiguity-averse individual would rather choose an alternative where the probability distribution of the outcomes is known over one where the probabilities are unknown. This behaviour was first introduced through the Ellsberg paradox (people prefer to bet on the outcome of an…