Research done by Kahneman and Tversky suggest that the way people are willing to make risky decisions is adversely effected by the unique outcomes that come out of each situation. These two won the Nobel Prize for their work on this subject. In their studies they used different amonts of money and chances of losing compared with chances of losing that money. They used the classic example of asking if somebody would be willing to bet ten dollars on a coin flip and if they won they'd double their money and if they lst they'd lose it. Well it turns out when it comes to tat little of a gain to be made almost everyone won't take the risk. Later they asked the same people if they had a 100% chance of losing 800$ if they'd take that or if they had an 85% chance of losing 1000$ and 15% chance of breaking even if they'd take that risk. Almost everyone was willing to risk the 1000$ which is the riskier choice. They found that people reacted differently depending on how risky the situation is. They went on later to use hypothetical situations involving human lives. These test went on to prove that people are willing to risk more lives in order to save more lives. This study was groundbreaking, because it helped show how people are likely to act in times of war, and what human nature tends to make people do. By getting this data they were able to inform places like the military about not taking to risky of choices in situations that it doesn't call for. I can see why this was an important study, and I think that it was great for people to find out just how the mind works when put in these risky situations. Personally I think that it should be more highly regarded, because I haven't even heard much about it, and it is a very interesting peice of work.
For more information:
www.spring.org.uk, research and article by Danial Kahneman and Amos Tversky
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This is the type of work that I think is great to learn about. I enjoy thinking about human traits that we all share. It just seems to me studies like this one are mostly regarded highly by the psychology community. I don't think the average person wants to think they have traits that practically every body shares. Especially traits that are not very appealing. We all want to be individuals and think we are in complete control of our mind and our decisions. Maybe we can be after we learn more about our minds from studies like this one.
ReplyDeleteI clicked on the link but it didn't take me too far. Based on your blog however I can see that this study would be relevant in cases of gambling or maybe even business transactions. On the other hand I don't see how it has anything to do with war. 1000 dollars compared to your life seems a little bit of a far stretch. However, I do understand how people are easily persuaded by odds and can sometimes make decisions based on numbers. Either way this is a very interesting study.
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