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May 05, 2008
John Tierney on the psychology of insurance
Ok, we need a break from gas tax holidays. This column from John Tierney is nothing particularly earth-shattering in its pronouncements, but it addresses the moderately interesting (and moderately amusing) questions of why people would believe that buying insurance actually affects the future outcome.
But I liked this somewhat tangential remark:
The fear of tempting fate showed up in further experiments with Cornell students. When told about an applicant to graduate school at Stanford who had been given a Stanford T-shirt by his mother, people assumed he would hurt his chances for admission if he had the hubris to wear it. And they believed that a professor was more likely to call on them in class if they didn’t do the assigned reading.
The latter might actually be true. We can read faces, you know.
Posted by William Polley at May 5, 2008 10:10 PM
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