14 Feb Behavioral Science in Action
Loss aversion with your latte…
One cup of coffee or tea in a disposable cup every day = 23 pounds of landfill waste a year. (The plastic coating inside the cups makes them difficult/expensive/impossible to recycle.)
Even though most shops offer a discount for reusable cups, only about 2% of customers take advantage of it.
Maybe the discounts are too low for the extra hassle of lugging a cup around. Or maybe it’s too hard to give up the status symbol of the branded paper cup. Whatever the reason, some shops—and governments—are thinking about applying the behavioral “losses loom larger than gains” approach: charge a fee or a tax for each disposable cup.
A nudge that’s barely nudging
South Korea has a smog problem, and government officials are offering commuters free public transportation on air quality emergency days in an effort to reduce pollution. It costs about $4.7 million a day, and increases ridership by . . . about two percent.
You light up my brain
Friends tend to see the world in a similar way, and science can prove it: MRI scans revealed friends’ brains light up similarly in response to certain things, in a way that the brains of mere associates do not. Next study: Are we friends because we see the world the same way, or do we see the world the same way because we’re friends?
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