Chapter 10 Decision utility: the way we will feel after a decision; long-term consequences Experienced utility: the way we feel in the present Behavioral traps: taking potentially dangerous decisions Time delay traps: when momentary gratification clashes with long-term consequences Countertraps: avoiding potentially beneficial behaviors People may have good intentions but underestimate the power of the situation Good things satiate: having more and more of a good thing provides less and less pleasure Deterioration trap: actions become less and less reinforcing or more and more punishing Bad things escalate: having more and more negative experiences leads to worse and worse feelings Loss aversion: losses are generally twice as painful as gains are pleasurable Countertrap: the more involved you are in a bad decision the harder it is to get away from it Duration neglect: only most intense/salient part of experience and final emotional level predict overall evaluation of the experience Nonregressive predictions: Overestimate how positively will feel about good consequences Overestimate how negatively will feel about bad consequences Neglect adaptiveness when predicting outcome |