| Week |
0 — Opening Thoughts & Course Overview |
| Dates |
Th 8/27 |
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Some opening thoughts |
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| Week |
1 — Introduction |
| Dates |
T 9/1, Th 9/3 |
| Song |
Girlfriend Is Better (Talking Heads) |
| Core readings |
- Milton Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” Essays in Positive Economics, 1953 (pages 154-159). (6 pages)
- Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," Science, 1974. (8 pages)
- Matthew Rabin, "A Perspective on Psychology and Economics," UC Berkeley Department of Economics Working Paper, 2002. (29 pages)
- George Akerlof, "Behavioral Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Behavior," Nobel Prize Lecture, 2001. (24 pages)
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| Cases |
- Bob Wachter, “Beware of the Robot Pharmacist,” Backchannel, 2015.
- Richard Thaler, “Unless You Are Spock, Irrelevant Things Matter in Economic Behavior,” New York Times, 2015.
- Michael Lewis, "Obama's Way," Vanity Fair, 2012.
- Shane Parrish, “How Using a Decision Journal Can Help You Make Better Decisions,” Farnam Street, 2014. See also: DayOne, Whitelines.
- Eric Jaffe, “Why You're More Likely To Buy Something When Shopping On Your iPad,” FastCoDesign, 2013. See also: Gilt.
- Brad Tuttle, “JC Penney Reintroduces Fake Prices (and Lots of Coupons Too, Of Course),” Time, 2013.
- Vanessa Bohns, “You’re Already More Persuasive than You Think,” Harvard Business Review, 2015.
- Claes Bell, “How big numbers short-circuit your brain and how to fight back,” Bargaineering, 2014.
- Kathleen McAuliffe, “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy,” The Atlantic, 2012.
- Jake Knapp, "The Time Timer: a simple tool for instantly better meetings," Google Ventures Library, 2014.
- “What Will the Grocery Experience Be Like with an Apple Watch?” PSFK Labs, 2015.
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| Week |
2 — A Short Philosophical Interlude |
| Dates |
T 9/8, Th 9/10 |
| Song |
Shock the Monkey (Peter Gabriel) |
| Core readings |
- Edward Glaeser, "Paternalism and Psychology," NBER Working Paper, 2005. (21 pages)
- Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, "Libertarian Paternalism," American Economic Review, 2003. (5 pages)
- Stanley Milgram, "Behavioral Study of Obedience," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1963. (8 pages)
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Fed Up, Atlas Films, 2014. (Video, 95 minutes, available on Netflix and other services)
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| Cases |
- Paul Berg, “Asilomar 1975: DNA modification secured,” Nature, 2008. (2 pages)
- Michael Moss, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food,” New York Times, 2013.
- Steven Levy, “Nest’s Plan to Stop Brownouts Before They Start,” Wired, 2013. See also: MyEnergy.com and Steve's Energy Report.
- Danny Sullivan, “Woman Follows Google Maps “Walking” Directions, Gets Hit, Sues,” Search Engine Land, 2010.
- Morgan O'Neill, "How Do You Help Your Town Dig Out From A Disaster?" NPR, 2015. (Audio, 10 minutes)
- Liz Stinson, “Could This Clever Cigarette Design Help You Quit Smoking?” Wired, 2014.
- Keith Naughton, “Scared of Self-Driving Cars? They’re a Lot Closer Than You Think,” Bloomberg, 2015.
- Katrin Bennhold, “Britain’s Ministry of Nudges,” New York Times, 2013. See also: “The limits of nudging,” The Economist, 2015.
- Richard Williams, “Obama’s Budding Nanny State,” Politico, 2013.
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| Week |
3 — Thinking, Feeling & Constraints |
| Dates |
T 9/15, Th 9/17 |
| Song |
Everything Counts (Depeche Mode), Wild Horses (Rolling Stones)
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| Core readings |
- Antonio Damasio, “This Time With Feeling,” FORA.tv, 2009. (Video, 1 hour)
- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011. Chapters 1-5 and pages 82-85, 97-104, and 109-118. (74 pages)
- Barbara Fredrickson, “The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions,” American Psychologist, 2001. (10 pages)
- Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface, 2000. Chapter 2. (24 pages)
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| Cases |
- Donald Norman, “The Devious Side of Design,” pages 92-95 and “Designing Objects for Fun and Pleasure,” pages 101-115 in Emotional Design, 2004. (19 pages) See also: “Creating an office for work and play,” Careers at Google.
- Ann Graybiel and Kyle Smith, “How the Brain Makes and Breaks Habits,” Scientific American, 2014. (4 pages) See also: “Should Habits or Goals Direct Your Life? It Depends,” Scientific American, 2013 and Habit List, HabitClock.com, HabitRPG and Chains.cc
- Nir Eyal, “Hooked: Building Habit-Forming Products,” 2013. (Video, 30 minutes)
- Dacher Keltner and Paul Ekman, “The Science of ‘Inside Out’,” New York Times, 2015.
- Susan Ager, "This Wouldn't Be The First Time a Child's Photo Changed History," National Geographic, 2015.
- Kathy Sierra, “Your app makes me fat,” Serious Pony, 2013. See also: Shane Parrish, “The History of Cognitive Overload,” Farnam Street, 2014.
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Lumosity.com, Elevate, Peak, Memrise, Focus@Will, Joyable and Coffitivity.
- Chris Velazco, “Amazon Wants To Do Good With Its Goods, Launches ‘AmazonSmile’ Charity Donation Program,” TechCrunch, 2013.
- Roger Dooley, “The Smartest Supermarket You Never Heard Of,” Forbes, 2014.
- “Advertising: Nothing more than feelings,” Economist, 2013.
- Alex Stone, "Why Waiting Is Torture," New York Times, 2012. See also: "Cars in the next lane really do go faster," "Mind games to beat bad behavior on planes and trains" and "Walk This Way."
- Hitomi Tsujita and Jun Rekimoto, "Smiling Makes Us Happier: Enhancing Positive Mood and Communication with Smile-Encouraging Digital Appliances," UbiComp, 2011. Accompanying video.
- Paul Piff et al., “Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015. (15 pages)
- Janina Marguc et al., “Stepping Back to See the Big Picture: When Obstacles Elicit Global Processing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011. (15 pages)
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| Week |
4 — Choice Architecture |
| Dates |
T 9/22, Th 9/24 |
| Song |
It's Raining Men (The Weather Girls) |
| Core readings |
- Simona Botti and Sheena Iyengar, "The Dark Side of Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare," Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 2006. (12 pages)
- Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir, "Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision-Making Among the Poor," Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 2006. (14 pages)
- Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein, "Do Defaults Save Lives?," Science, 2003. (2 pages)
- Daniel Mochon, “Single-Option Aversion,” Journal of Consumer Research, 2013. (11 pages)
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| Cases |
- Dan Slater, “A Million First Dates: How online romance is threatening monogamy,” first part of “Online Dating Game” series, Atlantic, 2013. See also: Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge, Dattch and Tinder.
- Julie Downs et al., “Strategies for Promoting Healthier Food Choices,” American Economic Review, 99:2, 2009. (5 pages) See also: Stephanie Clifford, “Why Healthy Eaters Fall for Fries,” New York Times, 2013.
- Ben Schiller, "You Can Determine Your Weight Based on What Food Is Visible In Your Kitchen," Fast Company, 2015. See also: Ben Schiller, "5 Nudges To Get Kids To Eat Better At School," Fast Company, 2014.
- Cass Sunstein and Lucia Reisch, “Automatically Green: Behavioral Economics and Environmental Protection,” Harvard Environmental Law Review, 2014. (32 pages)
- Anand Giridharadas, “Want a Steady Income? There’s an App for That,” New York Times, 2015.
- Wizit Decision Wizard
- Brian Christian, “The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That’s Changing the Rules of Business,” Wired, 2012. See also: Optimizely Case Studies, WhichTestWon.
- Julie Zhuo, "The Agony and Ecstasy of Building with Data," Medium, 2013.
- Ryan Holiday, "Everything Is Marketing: How Growth Hackers Redefine The Game," Fast Company, 2012. See also: Alex Schultz, "Growth," How to Start a Startup, 2014. (Video, 48 minutes)
- Cliff Kuang, “Disney’s $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband,” Wired, 2015.
- Sheila Kumar, “Oregon is first state to adopt automatic voter registration,” Associated Press, 2015.
- Michelle Miller, "Could digital tipping make you more generous?" CBS News, 2014.
- Ben Wellington, "Why You Should Put $19.05 on Your MetroCard to Outsmart the MTA," Gizmodo, 2014.
- Daniela Walker, “Tummy Translator Deciphers Your Pizza Order from Stomach Rumbles,” PSFK, 2015.
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| Note |
Assignment 1 — Retail Observation is due Thursday, 9/24 by noon. |
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| Week |
5 — Risk Behavior & Choice Under Pressure |
| Dates |
T 9/29, Th 10/1 |
| Song |
Should I Stay Or Should I Go? (The Clash), Under Pressure (Queen and David Bowie)
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| Core readings |
- Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," Econometrica, 1979. (27 pages)
- Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, 1986 (pages 1-16). (16 pages)
- David Tuckett, "Addressing the Psychology of Financial Markets," Economics: The Open Access, Open Assessment E-Journal, 2009. (20 pages)
- George Loewenstein et al, "Risk as Feelings," Psychological Bulletin, 2001. (15 pages)
- Terry Robinson and Kent Berridge, "Addiction," Annual Review of Psychology, 2003. (22 pages)
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| Watch one
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Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, HBO, 2011. (Video, 98 minutes, available on HBO, Amazon Prime and other video services)
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Thirteen Days, Beacon Pictures, 2000. (Video, 145 minutes, available on iTunes)
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| Cases |
- Cass Sunstein, "Why Ebola Is Scarier Than It Should Be," Bloomberg, 2014. See also: How Deadly is Ebola?
- Max Fisher, “How World War III became possible,” Vox, 2015.
- Thomas Astebro et al., “Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2014. (19 pages)
- Therese Huston, "Are Women Better Decision Makers?," New York Times, 2014.
- Roland Freyer, Jr., et al., “Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives Through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment,” NBER Working Papers, 2012. (19 pages)
- Aaron Sedley, “Change aversion: Why users hate what you launched (and what to do about it),” Design Staff, 2012.
- Richard Alleyne, “Ring finger length linked to City stockbrokers' success, claim scientists,” Telegraph, 2009.
- Steve Vernon, “Facing up to the risk of living too long,” CBS MoneyWatch, 2013. See also: Betterment.
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| Week |
6 — Happiness in Experience, Memory & Choice |
| Dates |
T 10/6, Th 10/8 |
| Song |
If It Makes You Happy (Sheryl Crow) |
| Core readings |
- Daniel Kahneman, “The riddle of experience vs. memory,” TED, 2010. (Video, 20 minutes)
- Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger, "Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2006. (20 pages)
- Daniel Kahneman and Robert Sugden, "Experienced Utility as a Standard of Policy Evaluation," Environmental and Resource Economics, 2005. (17 pages)
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| Cases |
- Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind,” Science, 2010. (1 page) See also: Happier.com, iMoodJournal for iOS, Moodnotes, Worry Watch.
- Cassie Mogilner, et al., "The Shifting Meaning of Happiness," Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011. See also: Top 2,500 Feelings (from We Feel Fine).
- Michael Carney, “Path’s Dave Morin gives up on lasting memories,” PandoDaily, 2014. See also: Path, Slingshot, Snapchat, Sobrr.
- "The Entire History of You," Black Mirror, 2011. (Video, 48 minutes) See also: Narrative Clip.
- Gary Marcus, "Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget," Wired, 2009.
- Rebecca Harshbarger, “Skip waiting for your check with new feature on OpenTable app,” New York Post, 2014. See also: Cover.
- Lucette Lagado, "What Patients Need to Remember After Leaving the Hospital," Wall Street Journal, 2015.
- David Heinemeier Hansson, "The day I became a millionaire," Medium, 2015.
- Andrew Healy and Gabe Lenz, “Substituting the End for the Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily to the Election-Year Economy,” American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 2012. (28 pages)
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| Week |
7 — The Pursuit of Happiness |
| Dates |
T 10/13, Th 10/15 |
| Song |
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones) |
| Core readings |
- Daniel Kahneman, et al, "Would You Be Happier if You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion," Science, 2006. (3 pages)
- Richard Layard, Andrew Clark and Claudia Senik, “The Causes of Happiness and Misery,” Chapter 3 in UN World Happiness Report, 2012. (21 pages)
- William Compton and Edward Hoffman, “Leisure, Flow, Mindfulness and Peak Performance,” Chapter 4 in Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Flourishing, 2012. (20 pages)
- June Gruber, et al., “A Dark Side of Happiness? How, When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2011. (8 pages)
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| Cases |
- Rock Band (pages 71-76), Chore Wars (pages 119-127) and Quest (pages 127-132) in Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken, 2011. For background, read pages 20-25 and Chapter 2, "The Rise of Happiness Engineers." (44 pages) For a laugh: The Gamification of Sisyphus.
- Galen Panger et al., “Graduate Student Happiness & Well-Being Report,” UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly, 2015. See also: Allison Harvey, “Pillow Talk: What Science Says About How to Sleep Better,” 2015. (Video, 52 minutes)
- Hanna Krasnova, et al., “Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction?” 11th Int’l Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik, Leipzig, Germany, 2013. (13 pages)
- Nick Statt, “Be one with Flappy Bird: The science of 'flow' in game design,” CNET, 2014. See also: Maria Konnikova, “Why Gamers Can’t Stop Playing First-Person Shooters,” New Yorker, 2013.
- Ferris Jabr, "How Does Meditation Change the Brain?," Scientific American, 2013. (Video, 2 minutes) See also: Calm.com, Mindfulness, Headspace, and The Mobile Flow.
- Ian Begley, "Knicks take 'mindfulness training'," ESPN, 2014. See also: Tom Rock, "Tom Coughlin to Giants: 'Be where your feet are'," Newsday, 2015.
- Joseph Walker, “Can a Smartphone Tell if You’re Depressed?,” Wall Street Journal, 2015.
- Sukrit Mohan, “What Makes People Happy? We Have the Data,” Jawbone Blog, 2015.
- Joe Berkowitz, "Why Miranda July Created 'Somebody'—An App That Sends Strangers To Deliver Messages," Fast Company, 2014.
- David Segal, "Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs," New York Times, 2010.
- Elizabeth Bernstein, "How You Make Decisions Says a Lot About How Happy You Are," Wall Street Journal, 2014.
- Robert Smith and Lisa Pollak, "When Salaries Aren't Secret," NPR, 2014. See also: Cat Zakrzewski, "Ex-Google Employee Exposes Unequal Pay With Spreadsheet," Wall Street Journal, 2015.
- Emily Blanchi, “The Bright Side of Bad Times: The Affective Advantages of Entering the Workforce in a Recession,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 2013. (29 pages)
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| Week |
8 — Intertemporal Choice |
| Dates |
T 10/20, Th 10/22 |
| Song |
The Waiting (Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers) |
| Core readings |
- Thomas Schelling, "The Intimate Contest for Self-Command," The Public Interest, 1980. (25 pages)
- Samuel McClure et al, "Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards," Science, 2004. (4 pages)
- Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch, "Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Pre-Commitment," INSEAD Working Paper, 2001. (12 pages)
- Ted O’Donoghue and Matthew Rabin, “Doing It Now or Later,” American Economic Review, 1999. (17 pages)
- Daniel Read and Barbara van Leeuwen, “Predicting Hunger: The Effects of Appetite and Delay on Choice,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1998. (15 pages)
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| Cases |
- Rebecca Ross et al., “Using Behavioral Economics for Postsecondary Success,” ideas42 White Paper, 2013. (35 pages) See also: A Simple Way to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges, New York Times, 2013.
- Gary Wolf, “The Data-Driven Life,” New York Times Magazine, 2010. See also: John-Paul Flintoff, “There’s an app for that: What to eat, when to meditate and whether to call your parents: can self-monitoring tools make a difference?” Aeon Magazine, 2013.
- Bonnie Spring et al., “Integrating Technology Into Standard Weight Loss Treatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” JAMA Internal Medicine, 2013. (6 pages) See also: Dietbet, PushForWellness, 100 Pushups, Couch to 5k, RunKeeper, Fitmob, Zombies Run!, OptimizeMe and Moves.
- Peggy Liu et al., “Using Behavioral Economics to Design More Effective Food Policies to Address Obesity,” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2014. (18 pages) See also: Julia Belluz, “Surprisingly simple tips from 20 experts about how to lose weight and keep it off,” Vox, 2014.
- Aaron Carroll, "The Surprising Failure of Calorie Counts on Menus," New York Times, 2015. See also: Alex Hutchinson, "How Salad Can Make Us Fat," New York Times, 2015.
- Susanna Fox and Maeve Duggan, “Tracking for Health,” Pew, 2013. See also: Reporter, Withings Smart Body Analyzer, Jawbone UP.
- Leo Lutero, "(For Better or For Worse) This Mirror Reflects Your Future Self," PSFK, 2015.
- Dan Ariely, “I'm Dan Ariely, Author and Professor, and This Is How I Work,” LifeHacker, 2014. See also: Dan Ariely, “Time Teasers: The Detriments of Task Switching,” Timeful Blog and Timeful, RescueTime.com, Moment, Balanced and Unsnooze.
- Shirley Wang, "To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved," Wall Street Journal, 2015.
- “Kitchen Safe,” Shark Tank, 2014. (Video, 15 minutes)
- Sendhil Mullainathan, "Looking at Productivity as a State of Mind," New York Times, 2014.
- Ron Lieber, “A Nudge to Save a Bit More,” New York Times, 2014. See also: HabitForge.com, Urge, Stickk.com, Pact and Digit.
- Ron Lieber, "The Most Serious Threat When Using Credit: You," New York Times, 2014.
- Joanna Stern, “Digital Fork Tracks and Sets a User's Eating Pace,” Wall Street Journal, 2013.
- Ben Schiller, “Hiding GPS Inside Shoes To Keep Track Of Wandering Alzheimer’s Patients,” Fast Company, 2014. See also: Vitality GlowCap.
- Melanie Pinola, “Avoid Bad Buying Decisions with the Dictionary of Numbers Add-On,” LifeHacker, 2013.
- "Groundbreaking Study Finds Gratification Can Be Deliberately Postponed," The Onion, 2015.
- Nicolas Kokkalis, et al. “Task Genies: Automatically Providing Action Plans Helps People Complete Tasks,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2013. (21 pages)
- Richard Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi, "Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving," Journal of Political Economy, 2004. (23 pages)
- Sendhil Mullainathan, "Development Economics Through the Lens of Psychology," World Bank Working Paper, 2007. (34 pages)
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| Note |
Assignment 2 — Behavioral Self-Observation is due Thursday, 10/22 by noon. |
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| Week |
9 — Confidence, Competition & Competence |
| Dates |
T 10/27, Th 10/29 |
| Song |
You’re So Vain (Carly Simon) |
| Core readings |
- Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund, "Do Women Shy Away from Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007. (34 pages)
- Kelly See et al., “The detrimental effects of power on confidence, advice taking, and accuracy,” Journal of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2011. (12 pages)
- Justin Kruger and David Dunning, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999. (12 pages)
- Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, "Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree," American Psychologist, 2009. (11 pages)
- Catherine Good et al., “Improving adolescents’ standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat,” Applied Developmental Psychology, 2003. (15 pages)
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| Cases |
- Anita Williams Woolley et al., “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups,” Science, 2010. (3 pages) See also: Anita Woolley et al., “Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others,” New York Times, 2015.
- Brian Welle, "Unconscious bias at work," Google Ventures, 2014. (Video, 1 hour) See also: Farhad Manjoo, "Exposing Hidden Bias at Google," New York Times, 2014.
- Jane Margolis et al., “The Anatomy of Interest: Women in Undergraduate Computer Science,” Women's Studies Quarterly, 2000. (21 pages) See also: Steve Henn, "When Women Stopped Coding," NPR, 2014.
- David Miller, “Beliefs about innate talent may dissuade students from STEM,” The Conversation, 2015. See also: “Growth Mindset for Teachers,” MindSet Kit, 2015.
- Eileen Pollack, "Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?," New York Times, 2013.
- Kate Losse, "Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in?," Dissent Magazine, 2013.
- Chris Mooney, "The Science of Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men," Mother Jones, 2014. See also: Jill Suttie, "Can Mindfulness Help Reduce Racism?," Greater Good, 2014.
- Carlos Bueno, "The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture," Quartz, 2014. See also: Gild, Pomello.
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Travis Kalanick (CEO, Uber), FailCon, 2011.
- Jake Knapp, "Note and vote: how to avoid groupthink in meetings," Google Ventures Library, 2014.
- Paul Graham, "Counterintuitive Parts of Startups, and How to Have Ideas," How to Start a Startup, 2014. (Video, 48 minutes; or Read) See also: Brian Chesky, "Company Culture and Building a Team, Part I." (Video, Start at 11:30, 40 minutes)
- Karla Hoff and Priyanka Pandey, "Belief Systems and Durable Inequalities: An Experimental Investigation of Indian Caste," World Bank Working Paper, 2004. (32 pages)
- Andy Yap, et al., “The Ergonomics of Dishonesty: The Effect of Incidental Posture on Stealing, Cheating, and Traffic Violations,” Psychological Science, 2013. (7 pages) See also: Gretchen Reynolds, “How Grounded Is Your Love Life?” New York Times, 2015.
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| Week |
10 — Fairness |
| Dates |
T 11/3, Th 11/5 |
| Song |
The Payback (James Brown) |
| Core readings |
- Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler, "Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market," American Economic Review, 1986. (13 pages)
- Alexander Cappelen et al, "The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, 2007. (9 pages)
- Armin Falk, "Gift Exchange in the Field," Econometrica, 2007. (12 pages)
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| Cases |
- Kusum Ailawadi and Paul Farris, “ How Companies Can Get Smart About Raising Prices," Wall Street Journal, 2013. See also: Four Barrel.
- Annie Lowrey, “Is Uber’s Surge-Pricing an Example of High-Tech Gouging?” New York Times, 2014. See also: Lyft email, SurgeProtector.
- "The rise of the sharing economy," Economist, 2013. See also: NeighborGoods.net, Yerdle, Getaround and Karma Kitchen.
- Michael Norton and Dan Ariely, “Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2011. (4 pages) See also: Eduardo Porter, “Happiness is a) Warm Puppy, b) Money, c) None,” New York Times, 2008.
- Paul Bloom, "The Dark Side of Empathy," The Atlantic, 2015. See also: David Ropeik, "Statistical Numbing: Why Millions Can Die and We Don’t Care," Psychology Today, 2011.
- Raluca Budiu, “The Reciprocity Principle: Give Before You Take in Web Design,” Nielsen Norman Group, 2014.
- Albert Sun, "To Divide the Rent, Start With a Triangle," New York Times, 2014. See also: Splitwise, TrueCar.
- Paul Graham, "Do Things that Don't Scale," 2013.
- E.B. Boyd, “Meet Facebook’s Compassion Czar,” Fast Company, 2011.
- Catherine Eckel, et al. “A Field Experiment on Directed Giving at a Public University,” NBER Working Paper, 2014. (6 pages)
- Nicholas Wright and Karim Sadjadpour, “The Neuroscience Guide to Negotiations With Iran,” Atlantic, 2014.
- Dan Ariely, "Are We More Rational Than Our Fellow Animals?" 2009.
- Justin Cheng, “Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities,” ICWSM, 2015. (10 pages)
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Cursors.io (View in Chrome).
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| Week |
11 — Catch Up |
| Dates |
T 11/10, Th 11/12 |
| Note |
- There are no new readings and no assignments this week.
- Please use the time to meet with your final project group (send the final group members to Galen by noon on Tuesday, 11/10).
- Steve and Galen will be holding office hours to meet with final project groups on Tuesday and Thursday to talk about your ideas. Please email one of us to schedule a time.
- Galen has offered to hold an optional review session during class time on Tuesday. If 10 people email him with interest, he'll host it!
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| Week |
12 — Ambivalence |
| Dates |
T 11/17, Th 11/19 |
| Song |
Mixed Emotions (The Rolling Stones) |
| Core readings |
- Neil Smelser, "The Rational and The Ambivalent in the Social Sciences," American Sociological Review, 1998. (13 pages)
- Jennifer Hochschild, “Ambivalence,” Chapter 8 in What’s Fair? American Beliefs about Distributive Justice, 1981. For background, read pages 20-26, 46-52 and 80-83. Note that first and last names starting with letters A-L are used for wealthy interviewees, M-Z for poor. (40 pages)
- Frenk van Harreveld et al., “Ambivalence and decisional conflict as a cause of psychological discomfort: Feeling tense before jumping off the fence,” Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 2009. (6 pages)
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| Cases |
- Stephen Craig et al., “Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut, Sometimes You Don’t: Citizens’ Ambivalence About Abortion,” Political Psychology, 2002. (15 pages)
- Jenny Davis, “Social Media and Experiential Ambivalence,” Future Internet, 2012. (13 pages)
- Ellie Harmon and Melissa Mazmanian, "Stories of the smartphone in everyday discourse: conflict, tension and instability," CHI, 2013. (9 pages)
- Bernd Ploderer et al., "Introducing the Ambivalent Socialiser," CHI, 2012. (4 pages)
- Bernd Ploderer, “Things You Don’t Want to Know About Yourself: Ambivalence About Tracking and Sharing Personal Information for Behavior Change,” OZCHI, 2012. (4 pages)
- Matt Gallivan, "The Case for Talking to Users in the Age of Big Data—or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Small Sample Sizes," Medium, 2013.
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| Week |
13 — Manipulation |
| Dates |
T 11/24, No Class Th 11/26 – Happy Thanksgiving |
| Song |
Steve says: Under My Thumb (Rolling Stones), Galen says: Control (Janet Jackson)
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| Core readings |
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| Cases |
- Cass Sunstein, “Fifty Shades of Manipulation,” Journal of Behavioral Marketing, Forthcoming. (31 pages)
- Galen Panger, “Why the Facebook Experiment is Lousy Social Science,” Medium, 2014. See also: Susan Fiske and Robert Hauser, “Protecting human research participants in the age of big data,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014. (2 pages)
- Ted Kaptchuk et al., “Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome,” PLoS ONE, 2010. (6 pages)
- Jason Purnell et al., “Behavioral Economics: ‘Nudging’ Underserved Populations to be Screened for Cancer,” Preventing Chronic Disease, 2015. (4 pages)
- Steven Stanton et al., “Effects of Induced Mood on Economic Choices,” Judgement and Decision Making, 2014. (8 pages)
- Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert, “Affective Forecasting: Knowing What to Want,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2005. (4 pages)
- Tanjim Hossain and John List, “The Behavioralist Visits the Factory: Increasing Productivity Using Simple Framing Manipulations,” NBER Working Paper, 2009. (21 pages)
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| Week |
14 — Closing Thoughts & Final Presentations I |
| Dates |
T 12/1, Th 12/3 |
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| Week |
RRR — Final Presentations II |
| Dates |
T 12/8, No Class Th 12/10 |
| |
|
| Week |
Finals — No Class, Have a Great Holiday |
