Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News
The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors
02/28/08
02:00:14 pm, by damageva 
, 189 words, 109 views 
Categories: Non-Environmental, Academic Study/Journal Article, Costs and Benefits
The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors
Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.
He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.
He is one of the role models in a new book by Dan Ariely, professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT “Predictably Irrational,”.
...
In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).
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You can play it yourself at tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com.
...
by John Tierney
FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26tier.html?em&ex=1204347600&en=bf8b21f9fbee36d7&ei=5087%0A
The New York Times www.NYTimes.com
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