Friday 4 December 2009

Reading week (random topic week!)

Someone mentioned in the revision week the fact that judgment and decision making studies are always based on the same topics:
  • Money (that's what I want)
  • MORTAL ASIAN DISEASES (caps locks for effect), in which two sets of population perfectly opposite and equivalent, but presented in a different way (saving lives vs killing them), are genocided multiple times. 
  • people giving you randomly money in the street, and asking you to gamble with it
  • people giving you mugs and asking you how much would you sell them for
  • people asking you how much do you want to pay for that mug the same people gave to someone else seconds ago (bastards! they could have given me the mug, instead of giving it to them!)

And it goes on. Since the statistical chances of that happening (ANY of those, as a matter of fact) is slim-to-none, I fail to see where those studies are helping me. Yes, they have proven that framing effects do exist, but I'm not usually presented with an option and the immediate equivalent opposite nearby, thus probably I won't even know that I've been framed (since you don't know the reference, the whole picture!).

I have decided to compile a list of things that need to be studied by judgment and decision making studies:
  1. why I go to work instead of staying in bed sleeping in a cold morning.
  2. why I don't mug that person on the street, and instead I go to work in cold mornings.
  3. why I spend my money fixing a bike instead of stealing one.
  4. why I don't steal a bike nor buy a new one, and instead I spend my money fixing that same bike.
  5. why people behave like animals when a radius = 15 feet of any form of public transport
  6. why some people prefer Coke rather than Pepsi
  7. why I am so lazy on doing the coursework, and I always seem to find that thing that happens to be more interesting than doing the coursework, instead of actually doing it.
  8. why different people use different web browsers
  9. why some people consider Yoko Ono the breaker of The Beatles, whilst other people don't.
  10. why some people vote Labour, and some people don't.
  11. why some people read The Sun (no excuse on that one!)
  12. why Judgement and Decision making studies don't address these VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS, and instead keep doing their research on trivial things like "money".
  13. why I don't consider money important, whilst other people consider it the most importantest [sic] thing ever
  14. why some people just can't spell properly, whilst I personally enjoy making some spelling mistakes for effect 
  15. why some people are ignorant because of lack of knowledge, and some other people are ignorant because they seem to enjoy the status that it confers them
  16. why I should stop writing witty comments and go to eat something instead of er..., well, keep writing witty comments and NOT eat something.
So there you go. Dear oh dear, plenty of things that need research!

2 comments:

  1. It seems I do agree that most of these subjects need research, but as for some of them:

    6. Pepsi is actually better than coke, which is a bit sweeter. Even though CC company produces better adverts.
    10. Because actually they're naive and think that it makes a difference.
    11. Because there is a naked girl on the second page? The only reason I can think of.. doesn't fully explain heterosexual female readers however. Unless they check that page in order to discuss it with a girl friend:
    - she's got asymmetrical breasts..
    - yeah and she's big.. totally..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ha ha - I enjoyed reading this. Actually, there's quite a bit of research into judgment and decision making that doesn't focus on money, though I take your point that quite a lot of it does. You might speculate on why that's the case...? But within the short space of the semester we have covered the topic of judgment, where we heard about magistrates' behaviour, as well as doctors and other groups. One of this week's presentations looked at birds' feeding decisions and next week we'll be hearing about the reasonable doubt criterion in the law and about risk perception in relation to terrorist incidents.

    Btw, if you closely read Chapter 7 in my textbook, you'll see a brief description of a Coke vs Pepsi experiment.

    ReplyDelete