Why do false rumors spread? Why do otherwise sensible people believe them? Why are they sometimes impervious to correction? There are several answers. (a) Some false rumors gain traction because of their fit with prior convictions within particular groups and cultures. People are strongly...

When members of deliberating groups speak with one another, their predeliberation tendencies often become exacerbated as their views become more extreme. The resulting phenomenon-group polarization-has been observed in many settings, and it bears on the actions of juries, administrative...

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were...

Some of the most interesting discussions of cost-benefit analysis focus on exceptionally difficult problems, including catastrophic scenarios, “fat tails,” extreme uncertainty, intergenerational equity, and discounting over long time horizons. As it operates in the actual world of government...

There can be a serious tension between the commitment to cost-benefit analysis and a realistic appreciation of the limits of official knowledge. Without significant efforts to reduce those limits, that analysis might be inadequately informed. Whenever regulators face significant informational...

There has been a great deal of discussion of the welfare effects of digital goods, including social media. The discussion bears on both private practice and potential regulation. A pilot experiment, designed to monetize the benefits of Facebook use, found a massive disparity between willingness...

Should there be a right not to be manipulated? What kind of right? On Kantian grounds, manipulation, lies, and paternalistic coercion are moral wrongs, and for similar reasons; they deprive people of agency, insult their dignity, and fail to respect personal autonomy. On welfarist grounds,...

Informational and reputational cascades often arise in the presence of four factors: (1) preference falsification; (2) diverse thresholds; (3) social interactions; and (4) group polarization. In the context of animal welfare, cascades have often occurred, and more consequential ones are...

How do human beings make decisions when, as the evidence indicates, the assumptions of the Bayesian rationality approach in economics do not hold? Do human beings optimize, or can they? Several decades of research have shown that people possess a toolkit of heuristics to make decisions under...

Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of “nudge” interventions that governments are now adopting alter people's decisions without resorting to coercion or significant changes to economic...