The Economist recently put out a podcast of an interview with behavioral economist Dan Ariely who's hawking his book: Predictably Irrational. I can't speak to the book, but I can say that he articulates, in the interview, what is perhaps the driving force behind my own interest in such matters:
"When we come to design the physical world -- we design it, we design chairs and watches and shoes and all of these things -- we understand our physical limitations and we design the world accordingly ….But we also design a world that requires mental effort."
"While we recognize our limitations in the physical world, we don't recognize our limitations in the mental world. Why would we be physically limited and supermen of the mind? So, behavioral economics tells us where we fall short…. And the good lesson…is if we understand where we fall short, we have the capacity to design a better world. We can design a world that takes into account our own limitations."
He goes on to talk about how consumers could potentially be protected when shopping for mortgages by means of a user-friendly mortgage calculator that can help them actually figure out what the long-term cost/benefits equation looks like.
My interests are different, but along the same lines: to better understand our underlying social prejudices, understood in this light as context-dependent limitations on our capacity to make good social decisions (who/when to trust, who/when to fight, when to stop NOT trusting, etc.), so as to improve the interaction of political institutions, individuals and social groups. In other words, I ask 'Why Can't We Be Friends?' No, really.
Incidentally, I like how the title of the Spanish version of his book is a little spicier: 'The Traps of Desire.' I smell a spin-off telenovela!
[get the podcast through iTunes]
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