There is a "Chicago school" in the economics field. They believe that everyone is very rational when making choices. They will definitely make their own decisions. Therefore, the government should not interfere with individual freedom and let people freely choose what they want. lifestyle.
This school is very influential in the economics field and is the theoretical basis of "neoliberalism." However, there have been people who have questioned this theory and accused it of overestimating human judgment. The opponents include many psychologists. They have proved through a lot of research that there are two systems in the human mind. A system is based on instinct or intuition to make decisions. The advantage is that the response speed is fast, the disadvantage is not reliable, and often Made a mistake. Another system is based on logic and speculation, which is called "rational thinking"; this system is slow in response, but the advantage is that the probability of error is low and reliable.
Almost everyone has two systems coexisting in their minds, which determines that humans cannot always make the most favorable decisions for themselves. For example, most people know that smoking is harmful to health, or they will regret when they don’t save some money when they are young, but many people just can’t stop it.
Then, is it possible to change the thinking habits of ordinary people and teach everyone to use rationality to make decisions? This move may be feasible, but more and more psychological research proves that even rational thinking is unreliable. Professor Albert Mannes, an experimental psychologist at the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania, published a paper in the journal Psychological Science and concluded that humans are always more inclined.
Some people have raised this point of view long ago, but there has been no reliable evidence. Someone has done experiments before, letting the volunteers guess something unfamiliar, as long as the answer is within 10% of the error range. However, Mannis believes that such an experiment is not in line with the actual situation, because many people are biased in the direction of mistakes when making decisions. For example, if someone is going to an important date, it is much more harmful than being late. More, so he will make a more pessimistic prediction of traffic on the road.
Thus, Professor Mannes improved the experimental program. He recruited a group of volunteers to let them judge the highest temperature in Philadelphia on a certain day in history and given a certain reward for the judgment. The first day is first and foremost, as long as the answer error rate is within 10%. The rules will be revised the next day, and only the judgment is correct or the error is not higher than a certain percentage. The third day, in turn, can only be awarded if the judgment is correct or the error is not lower than a certain percentage. Therefore, in the two days of the experiment, the volunteers made corresponding adjustments to their own judgments, which is expected.
However, these adjustments are far from enough and far from the best option. Professor Mannes concluded that humans have serious cognitive biases. They believe too much in the knowledge they have in their minds and seriously underestimate their level of ignorance.
The basis of rational thinking is knowledge. If knowledge is wrong, the result of thinking can be imagined. If rational thinking is unreliable, then the decision made by one person is less likely to be beneficial to oneself, and the foundation of the Chicago school does not exist.
The theory of the Chicago School has been regarded as the golden rule by many politicians, but countless historical facts prove that they are all wrong. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, two scholars from the Chicago School, have co-authored a book called Nudge. Point out the root cause of the error. They believe that the formulation of policies also requires scientific evidence. There are countless evidences that human thinking has inherent obstacles, so decisions that are not conducive to oneself are often made. This kind of obstacle is solidified in the genes and hard to be changed. Therefore, a smart politician should learn to use the “nudge” way to promote the new policy, instead of forcing the people to change their choices.