Cass Sunstein in ‘Cognition and Cost-Benefit Analysis‘ thinks at least six cognitive biases can be overcome by pushing your mind through a cost-benefit analysis. Loss Aversion, Endowment Effects, and Ignoring Trade-offs are obviously all about cost-benefit arithmetic — addition and subtraction, mainly. The Availability Heuristic — the tendency to base decisions on whatever memories are most vivid or quickly available — is counteracted by cost-benefit analyses’ foregrounding of less vivid and more remote but clearly probative information.
How would you separate the effect of exposure to cost benefit analysis from the tendency of people to believe their teachers?
How would you separate the effect of exposure to cost benefit analysis from the tendency of people to believe their teachers?