There is an important assumption in traditional economics that everyone is a "rational person", and we will take all kinds of factors into account and get the most favorable results. Sailor, a behavioral economist, believes that a completely rational economic man cannot exist, and people's various economic behaviors are bound to be influenced by various "irrationalities". The factors of irrational consumption mainly include bounded rationality, social preference and lack of self-control.
? Why do people choose irrational consumption? Because people only have limited rationality.
People often set up different "psychological accounts" when making decisions. The so-called psychological account means that people unconsciously divide property into different accounts, and different psychological accounts have different bookkeeping methods. For example, the Ahua family has saved 200,000 yuan to buy a new house, and plans to buy it three years later. The interest rate of money deposited in the bank is 3%; Recently, a family in Iowa has borrowed 654.38 million yuan to buy a car. The interest rate for a new car loan for three years is 5%. Why don't they buy a car with their own 200 thousand? Because they have two different psychological accounts in mind, one is to buy a house and the other is to buy a car. Individuals often violate some simple economic algorithms when making decisions, thus making many irrational consumption behaviors. This can also explain why people can hold shares for a long time in a bear market, but not in a bull market. Because when trading stocks, people have two accounts in mind, one is the actual account and the other is the book account. In the bull market, we are more willing to take care of ourselves. At this time, the value of the actual account seems to be greater than the book. In a bear market, people hate losing money and won't sell their stocks. The losses caused by books seem to be less than the actual accounts, although they are the same. People set up psychological accounts, which shows that people's minds are separated. When making money, our minds are distinguishing between big and small values, while in the face of losses, our minds are distinguishing between light and heavy losses. The beauty and ugliness, big and small, heavy and light, produced by people's separated hearts are actually a unified whole. Just like in psychology, love and hate use the same area of the brain, so love and hate are homologous.
Our minds are different, so we can only achieve bounded rationality when we look at the overall decision separately, and bounded rationality is still irrational in nature. People often have social preference factors when making economic decisions such as consumption. Among social preferences, there is a theory of "fairness", which holds that the so-called fairness preference means that people have the motivation to reduce the income difference between themselves and others. When we are ahead of others, we will make a little sacrifice to help others. When we lag behind others, we will hurt others. The "dictator game" designed by Seiler is widely used to measure the attitudes of groups around the world towards fairness. This experiment is also speculative, discussing rationality and irrationality. The conclusion of dictator game: The last dictator, if he follows the hypothesis of rational man, the selfish dictator must have taken this wealth for himself.
People's attitude towards fairness also shows that people's hearts are contradictory, and TA can be compassionate and jealous at the same time. Out of sympathy, we may donate money to those in need. But sometimes we have strong jealousy, because others have more than ourselves.
Sometimes we have a long-term goal, but we are attracted by short-term temptations, which affects our consumption choices. For example, we want to sign up for a fitness class, but we can't resist the temptation of brand-name bags.
We often set new goals, such as taking several qualification exams, how much money to save and signing up for an interest class. But it is often difficult to implement because we lack self-control. Through the "planner-implementer" model, Sailor analyzed the contradiction between long-term planning and short-term implementation.
In order to solve this problem, Seiler put forward the "boosting theory". Behavioral economists have done an experiment: handing out candy with wrapping paper to passers-by.
The first experiment: the organizer found a lot of candy paper in the ash bucket and bicycle basket near the candy distribution point.
The second experiment: the organizer marked a string of green footprints on the ground of the distribution point, and there was a trash can at the end of the footprints. This behavior reduced the candy wrapping paper in public facilities by 46%.
"Assisting inference" is not forcing people to do things, but guiding people to make correct decisions in order to achieve long-term plans. This method can help us to control ourselves better.
The long-term goal is like a rational person, and the short-term temptation is like an irrational person. Therefore, when we consume, we may not necessarily make effective choices, but prefer perceptual desires.
Based on bounded rationality, social preference and lack of self-control, Sylar believes that people's economic behavior will inevitably be influenced by "irrationality".
Psychodynamically speaking, consumption is an act of self-identification, which is mainly driven by emotions and pays attention to the symbolic meaning of products. Introducing psychology into economics makes economics more humane, and choosing irrational consumption is more in line with human nature.