I remember being moved by behavioral science. Seemed like a cheat code. Simple tricks in life, backed by science, that could make a world of difference. This was pretty new popular topic when I was studying finance. Get a job, win arguments and get the girl to fall in love with you.
I started to notice some inconsistencies. It seemed like you had an arsenal of explanations to explain anything.
Stock rallies and then falls? Mean reversion! Anchoring!
Stock rallies two days in a row? Herd mentality! Fear of missing out! Recency bias!
And then came "Thinking Fast and Slow". Much of it was based on "priming":
> In this experiment, participants were asked to create four-word sentences from sets of five words. One group was given words associated with elderly stereotypes (like "Florida," "bald," "wrinkle"), while the control group received neutral words. Afterward, researchers measured how long it took participants to walk down a hallway, finding that those exposed to elderly-related words walked significantly slower—supposedly without conscious awareness of the influence.
Much of the book, and behavioral science took this as a bedrock study. They can just say "we primed the participants to ..." and of course the effect of priming was taken as given. And somehow you had more results!
Only problem is priming had difficulty being replicated. Which is kind of weird since it's so simple to replicate. So does no one care if its true? What does this say about the field?
I started to notice some inconsistencies. It seemed like you had an arsenal of explanations to explain anything.
Stock rallies and then falls? Mean reversion! Anchoring!
Stock rallies two days in a row? Herd mentality! Fear of missing out! Recency bias!
And then came "Thinking Fast and Slow". Much of it was based on "priming":
> In this experiment, participants were asked to create four-word sentences from sets of five words. One group was given words associated with elderly stereotypes (like "Florida," "bald," "wrinkle"), while the control group received neutral words. Afterward, researchers measured how long it took participants to walk down a hallway, finding that those exposed to elderly-related words walked significantly slower—supposedly without conscious awareness of the influence.
Much of the book, and behavioral science took this as a bedrock study. They can just say "we primed the participants to ..." and of course the effect of priming was taken as given. And somehow you had more results!
Only problem is priming had difficulty being replicated. Which is kind of weird since it's so simple to replicate. So does no one care if its true? What does this say about the field?