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Matthew Taylor: The UK government has just set up a behavioural insight team, and behavioural economics has been subject to a surge of policy interest in recent years. What do you think has driven this trend? 马修·泰勒（Matthew Taylor）：英国政府最近设立了一个行为学洞察力小组，近年来行为经济学和越来越多的政策利益联系在一起。你觉得这趋势背后的驱动力是什么？ Dan Ariely: Without the financial crisis, I don’t think behavioural economics would have gained the popularity it has. Almost everyone believed that the market was the most rational place on the planet, yet it failed in a magnificent way. This proved that people who deal with large amounts of money are as capable of irrationality – from reckless gambling to myopia and overconfidence – as anybody else. 丹·艾瑞里（Dan Ariely）：我认为，如果没有金融危机，行为经济学不会像现在这样受欢迎。以前几乎所有人多认为市场是地球上最理性的地方，而现在它也受到了重创。这证明了整天和大把的钱打交道的人也和其他所有人一样不理智——从鲁莽的赌博到短视到过度自信。 In addition, over the years, behavioural economics has moved from the lab to the field. Early researchers, such as Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky, were working on theories of human behaviour using gambling. The application of their work to real life wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone. Now, however, we’re looking at what behavioural economics can teach us in a whole range of environments, from schools and kindergartens to banks and hospitals. We’ve shown that it matters in everyday situations, and in ways that almost everyone finds appealing. 再者，这几年，行为经济学已经从实验室进入了实战领域。早期的研究者，如丹尼尔·卡尼曼（Daniel Kahneman ）和已故的阿莫斯·特沃斯基（Amos Tversky），进行的是人类赌博行为的理论研究。他们的的研究对现实生活的实用性并不是很明显。而现在，我们已经看到行为经济学在各个领域的贡献，从学校，幼儿园，到银行和医院。它出现在日常生活的各种情境中，并且它的方式吸引了几乎所有人。 MT: Can you give me some examples of these real-world implications? MT：你能否给出一些现实生活中应用的例子？ DA: We’ve recently done a study looking at how people decide which loans to pay back. It turns out that, when people have multiple loans, they choose to pay back the small ones first, rather than the ones with the highest interest rate. Out of the thousands of people who took part in the study, not a single one chose the perfectly rational strategy. Here, there’s a clear opportunity to stop people from wasting money by encouraging them to make better financial decisions. DA：我们最近研究了人们如何决定先还哪个贷款。结果显示，当人们有多个贷款时，他们首先还最小的那个，而不是利息最高的那个。在参加调查的几千人中，没有一个人选择最理性的策略。通过鼓励人们做出更好的理财决策，我们可以利用这个机会来防止人们挥霍金钱。 Another study we’re doing is about why people don’t look for second opinions in medicine. There’s an obvious financial motivation for doctors and dentists to overtreat people, which explains why, for instance, 75% of wisdom tooth extractions in the US are estimated to be unnecessary. Second opinions are one of the best remedies for this type of conflict of interest, because they enable patients to get advice from someone other than the person they are paying for treatment. 我们做的另一个研究是关于为什么人们在就医时不寻求第三方意见。医生和牙医有着很明显的过度治疗病人的动机，举个例子，这解释了为什么在美国估计有75%的智齿原本是不需要拔掉的。第三方意见是解决这种利益冲突最好的方式，因为这使得病人可以得到建议，但不是从他们需付款的那个人那里。 Conflicts of interest are a good example of the importance of behavioural economics. In standard economics, there’s no such thing as a conflict of interest: a doctor or dentist simply calculates the comparative benefits of giving bad advice and remaining honest. Yet what our study has shown is that, while many practitioners believe they’re always acting in the best interests of their clients, the reality is that they often see the world in terms that are more compatible with their own financial interest. They don’t realise how influenced they are by conflicts of interest, so they don’t even think that it’s important for them to fight against these forces. 利益冲突很好地说明了行为经济学的重要性。标准经济学中没有利益冲突这回事：医生或者牙医仅会计算他们给出坏建议和保持诚实之间的相对利益。而我们的研究则显示，尽管很多医学从业者相信他们的行为总是从客户的最大利益出发，事实上，他们通常以更加符合他们自己经济利益的眼光来看待世界。他们没有意识到自己受到利益冲突的影响，所以他们不认为有必要对抗这些力量。 MT: Can you explain this gap in our self-knowledge in terms of a distinction between rationality and predictability? MT：你能否从理性和可预测性的区别的角度解释我们自我认识中的这一缺口？ DA: Absolutely. Rationality describes the idea that we all abide by certain laws of economic theory, whereas predictability describes our tendency to do the same thing over and over again. Certain emotions, such as hunger or sexual arousal, temporarily change us. Once triggered, they change us in a very predictable way, but also in a way that we don’t fully appreciate or anticipate. For example, in one experiment, we asked people how they would behave when they were sexually aroused; we then asked them the same questions when they were actually in a state of arousal. What we found was a vast difference in people’s predictions about how they would behave. For example, during arousal, people were much more open to the idea of having unprotected sex or sex with animals. This shows that we don’t anticipate how emotions will influence us, even though their influence is systematic and predictable. DA：当然。理性是指我们都遵守特定的经济理论法则，而可预测性描述了某些现象会被不断重复的倾向。一些特定的情感，如饥饿和性冲动，能够暂时性地改变我们。一旦受到触发，他们会以非常可预测的形式改变我们，但同时也没有受到我们的承认和预期。例如，在一个实验中，我们请志愿者预测他们性冲动时可能的行为；然后我们在他们确实处于性冲动时问他们同样的问题。我们发现人们对他们可能行为的预期与实际行为之间有着巨大的不同。例如，在冲动期间，人们更倾向于接受未保护的性行为，对兽交具有更加开放的心态。这显示了我们没有预期到情绪对我们的影响，尽管这种影响是系统的、可预测的。 MT: Isn’t there a danger that this research is a bit like Schrödinger’s Cat: once you know the problem exists, it ceases to exist? MT：这种研究会不会有点像薛定谔的猫：你知道答案的那一刻，问题也不再存在了？ DA: This is possible, but it does not seem to be the case. However well you understand the complexity of choice, and the trade-offs it involves between short- and long-term gains, it’s hard not to make certain mistakes. For instance, many US states prohibit people from using their mobile phones to send text messages while they are driving, yet accident rates have actually gone up in these states because the new law has prompted people to begin texting below rather than above the wheel. We all understand the dangers of doing this, but when we feel our phone vibrate, we’re tempted to act against our better judgement. DA：这是可能的，但实际上并不是如此。不管你如何了解选择的复杂性，以及短期和长期的利益之间的权衡，你还是很难避免犯某些特定的错误。例如，美国很多州都禁止人们开车时打电话或发短信，而这些州的事故发生率却反而上升了，因为这个新的法律促使人们开始在方向盘之下而不是之上发短信。我们都知道这么做的危险性，但当我们的电话震动时，我们忍不住逆着自己的理智行事。 MT: So what does all this mean for policy? There’s a whole range of approaches that you can take to tackle these problems. At one extreme, you can assume that people cannot be trusted to make the right decisions, so you introduce top-down policies to counteract this; at the other extreme, you can believe that people understand their own frailties and, at most, you need to supply them with the tools to combat these problems. Where do you stand on this spectrum? MT：那么这一切对政策制定来说都意味着什么呢？你有一大堆不同的方法来解决这样的问题。一个极端是，你假设人们不会做出正确的决定，于是你引进从上而下的对策；另一个极端，你认为人们理解他们自己的弱点，并且，你只需提供给他们处理这些问题的工具。在这个范围里面，你站在哪边？ DA: I think all of these approaches are fine in principle. What’s important is to figure out the causes of each of our misbehaviours and find the ideal approach to combat them. What we basically need is evidence about which approaches are likely to work best in each of the cases. DA：我觉得所有这些方法在原则上都是可以的。重要的是找出我们每个错误行为的成因，并且找到理想的抗争策略。从根本上我们需要的是，找到在每种特定的情况下哪一种方法或态度会奏效。 When people think about this range of possible solutions, one question that comes up is about the extent of paternalism that we are comfortable with. Personally, I’m not against paternalism, but I think that the level should be based on public opinion. My view is that we should think about what kind of society we want to live in and then work out what we need to do in terms of limitations and regulations to achieve it. We don’t all need a neuroscientist’s level of understanding of why we make certain mistakes or act in certain ways, but we do need to attack the cases in which we agree that we’re not doing things the way we would ideally like to be doing them. 当人们思考这一系列可能的解决方案时，碰到的其中一个问题是关于我们能够忍受的家长作风的程度。作为我个人，我并不是的很反对家长作风，但是我觉得它的程度应该建立在公众意见之上。我的观点是，我们应该考虑一下自己想生活在什么样的社会中，并且要实现这样的社会我们需要什么样的限制和规范。关于我们为什么犯一些特定的错误，并以一定的方式行事，我们并不需要神经学家的理解水平，但是如果我们同意自己没有像理想中的那样做事，我们应该着手解决这样的情况。 One of the areas in which I’m particularly paternalistic is the idea of getting people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Think about global warming: it’s the archetype of a problem that people don’t care about. We don’t see people directly suffering from it right now; it will affect other people before it affects us; and anything we do to help is a drop in the ocean. Every force that causes human apathy is combined into this one. If we can’t get people to care about the cause itself, however, perhaps we can get people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. 我觉得特别需要家长制作风的领域之一是使人们出于另外的原因去做正确的事情（的那些领域）。比如全球变暖：这是人们所不关心问题的典范。我们看不到人们受到它的直接影响；就算会影响我们，也会先影响别人；我们无论做什么都是大海中的一滴水。引起人们冷漠的各种力量都集结在这个问题中。如果我们无法让人们关心这个事业本身，那么我们也许可以让他们出于其他的原因而去做正确的事情。 It might be a case of posting people’s energy consumption on their Facebook page or the window of their house, or encouraging children to hassle their parents; anything that means people acquire the right habits. 它可能会采取各种形式，如将人们的能量消耗量发布在他们的Facebook主页或房子的窗户上，或者教孩子去烦他们的家长——任何使得人们形成正确习惯的方法。 MT: This is the kind of insight that drives me to reconsider social conservatism. Economic historian Avner Offer, for example, has argued that society creates certain ‘commitment devices’ – marriage, the welfare state, the church – that enable us to deal with our frailties. He goes on to claim that, when we became affluent in the 1960s and 1970s, we no longer needed these devices, which led to a situation in which we were richer but not happier. So, do you think institutions have a value in motivating people to make decisions that are better for them in the long term? MT：这种洞察驱使我去重新思考社会保守主义。例如，经济历史学家艾夫纳·奥弗尔（Avner Offer）认为，社会创造了一些特定的“承诺机制”——婚姻，福利制度，教堂——使我们得以控制自己的弱点。他还表示，当我们在上世纪60和70年代变得富裕的时候，我们不再需要这些机制，这样就导致了一种虽然富裕但不幸福的情况。那么，你是否认为社会机构的价值之一在于促使人们做出长远来看对他们有利的决定？ DA: These institutions have evolved over a long time and involve many clever features. If you spend £25,000 on a wedding in front of lots of people, for instance, you’re less likely to break off the relationship when things are not going as smoothly as you would hope. When we engage in an outcome that we think is irreversible, we often become committed to it and, by doing so, find ourselves enjoying it more. DA：这些机制已经演化了很长的时间，具有很多聪明的特征。例如，如果你在很多人的面前办了一个25,000英镑的婚礼，当事情没有你想象的那样顺利时，你也不会那么轻易地中断婚姻关系。当我们进入一种看似不可逆转的结果中时，我们经常会投入其中，并且，通过自己的投入，发现自己越来越享受这个结果。 Another interesting institution is the Catholic practice of confession. From a rational perspective, confession is a strange mechanism: after all, if you knew you could get absolved for cheating, you ought to be inclined to cheat more often, ideally on the way to the church to minimise the chances of dying without absolution. However, our experiments in cheating show a particular pattern: people start by cheating a little bit, because they’re trying to balance feeling good about themselves with benefiting from cheating, but after they’ve reached a certain point, they begin thinking of themselves as cheaters and, once this happens, they start cheating a lot. In this instance, confession really helps, as it gives people a chance to turn over a new page. 另一个很有趣的体制是天主教的忏悔机制。从理性的角度看，忏悔是一个奇怪的机制：毕竟，如果你知道自己的出轨行为会得到饶恕，你只会更加过分，理想一点，去几趟教堂来最小化未经宽恕就死去的可能性。然而，我们对出轨所作的实验显示了一种特殊的模式：人们一开始只会出轨一点点，因为他们试图在自我感觉良好和从出轨中获益之间达到平衡，但是当他们的出轨行为达到一定程度之后，他们开始觉得自己是负心人，这一旦发生，他们就会开始大量出轨。在这种情况下，忏悔真的会起作用，因为它给了人们重新做人的机会。 What this shows is that people inherently want to be honest – more honest, in fact, than traditional economic theory suggests – but once they start thinking of themselves as a bad person, there’s nothing to stop them from carrying on down that road. 这告诉我们，人们本质上是渴望诚实的——甚至比传统经济学假设的还要更诚实——但是，一旦他们开始认为自己是坏人，就没有什么能阻止他们继续变坏了。 MT: We’re talking about big problems and big institutions here. Does behavioural economics really have the power to provide solutions to these issues, or are we exaggerating the benefits that it can bring? MT：我们讨论的是大问题和大的体制。行为经济学是否真的有能力解决这些问题，我们有没有夸大它可能带来的好处？ DA: Since behavioural economists create the conditions for their experiments, there’s an argument that they can manufacture effects to make them look bigger or smaller. As for whether this matters, you’d get a different opinion depending on whether you talked to a psychologist or an economist. Psychologists would say that they care about the process rather than the effect – what matters is putting something under a microscope and seeing how it works – but for economists and people who want to influence policy, the effect is important. 丹：由于行为经济学的实验条件是自己设定的，有人认为它可以制造想要的结果来达到预想的目的。至于这是否要紧，你问一个心理学家或一个经济学家得到的答案是不一样的。心理学家会说他们更注重过程而不是结果——重要的是将事情放到显微镜之下然后观察它是怎么回事——但对于经济学家和想要影响政策的人来说，结果很重要。 So, the question is how expensive these behavioural-based interventions are and how significant an impact they will have. Chicago economist John List recently did a six-month study in a factory in China to investigate how productivity changes as a function of whether the incentives are framed as gains or losses. He found out that the difference was equivalent to slightly more than one per cent a year. When you think about what that adds up to over 20 years, you realise that it’s hugely significant; in fact, it’s equivalent to the difference between the US and Ethiopia. 所以，问题是这些基于行为学的干预的代价、重要性和可能起到的作用。芝加哥经济学家约翰·李斯特（John List）最近在中国的一个工厂进行了六个月的研究，调查在激励政策采取收入和损失两种相反的形式时，生产力作为其函数是如何发生变化的。他发现两种情况之间的差异每年为大约1%多一点。如果你想想20年的时间那会是一个什么概念，你就知道它的影响非常之大；实际上，这种差异和美国与埃塞俄比亚的差异等同。 I encountered another example recently, when I visited a big drug company that is concerned about the number of diabetics who do not take insulin at mealtimes. The company has spent billions of dollars on improving the technology but, despite this, the compliance rate in the US is less than 30%, which means the current gap is mostly due to psychological barriers. Yet hardly any money has been spent on understanding the human motivation related to mealtime insulin and the reasons for this failure. 我最近又碰到了另一个例子，我访问了一家大的制药公司，他们对那些进餐时间不服用胰岛素的大量病人感到没辙。公司花费了数十亿美元完善技术手段，但尽管如此，美国的坚持服药率仍低于30%，也就是说，现在的缺口主要是由于心理障碍。然而几乎没有任何美元被用来研究和进餐时间胰岛素服用有关的人类激励及其失败的原因。 MT: One of the things that interests me is how all this relates to social networks. What do you think about the interface between your work and research into the way people influence one another? MT：我感兴趣的事情之一是这些研究和社会网络的联系。你是怎么看待你的研究和对人类的相互影响的研究之间的交接点的？ DA: Social norms are constantly evolving and they can tell us a lot about how and why people make decisions. In one experiment, we gave students a chance to cheat publicly on a test and found that, once one student had cheated, several others would as well. This was only the case, however, if they thought that the cheating student was part of their ‘in-group’. What this reveals is that people are strongly influenced by what is socially acceptable misbehaviour within their own culture. Culture can take behaviour out of the general moral context and define it in a particular way. It’s likely that this is what happened in the MPs’ expenses scandal in the UK, when MPs started behaving in a corrupt way because they saw a few of their peers were doing it. DA：社会规范在不断地演变，它可以告诉我们人们为什么和怎么做出决定。在一个实验中，我们给学生一个公开作弊的机会，结果发现，一旦一个学生作弊，其他几个人也会跟他一起作弊。而这只有在他们觉得那个作弊的学生是他们的“圈内人”的时候才会发生。这表明人们深受自己文化中被社会化接受的不良行为的影响。文化可以使行为脱离其一半的道德语境，并以特定的方式对其定义。英国议员的开销丑闻可能就是这么一回事，议员们开始堕落的生活方式因为他们看见自己的同僚中有一批人这样做。 MT: In the end, is this just a way of adding bells and whistles to the neoclassical view of human nature? It’s a more complex structure of incentives, but you’re essentially saying that people are individualistically driven and that, if we can understand enough of what drives them, we can propose solutions. Is behavioural economics original, or is it just a new term for an old approach? MT：归根结底，这是否就是对新古典主义对人类本质的看法进行添油加醋？这确实是一个更加复杂的激励系统，但是本质上你就是在说人们是被驱动的个体，如果我们可以足够理解其中的驱动力，我们就可以提出解决方案。行为经济学是原创的还是只是旧观点的新的表达方式？ DA: I think we needed a new term so that we could launch a convincing attack against neoclassical economics, which people in policy and business have relied on for a long time. Economics has become the most successful social science by being dogmatic and imperialistic; the implication is that an introduction to economics is all you really need to design policy. If economists were to admit that their theory of human nature only explains a small part of human behaviour and has to be studied in conjunction with other social sciences, I don’t think we would need to give such a specific label – behavioural economics – to our field. DA：我觉得我们需要这个新的名称以便对新古典主义经济学宣战，政治和商业中人已经依赖新古典主义经济学很长时间了。经济学通过教条主义和帝国主义，变成了最成功的社会科学；它假设只要引入经济就可以进行政策规划了。如果经济学家敢于承认他们关于人性的理论只解释了人类行为的一小部分，必须要和其他社会科学相结合才能继续研究，那么我们就不用给我们的研究领域贴上“行为经济学”这样一个特定的标签。 MT: Do you believe that all these different scientists and economists can ever come together to produce an integrated account of human nature? MT：你相不相信所有这些不同的科学家和经济学家能够成功地走到一起来创造出一个完整的关于人性的描述？ DA: No, I don’t think we’ll see an integrated account, but I believe there’s the potential to develop a single field of study that is effectively applied social science. Economists, sociologists and psychologists will always take different approaches, but when we come to implement a policy or business decision, I hope we’ll be able to combine all their inputs to create experiments that test a wide range of possible solutions in order to find out what really works the best. DA：不，我不认为我们会得出一个完整的描述，但我相信有可能发展出一个单一的研究领域，它是一门有效应用的社会科学。经济学家，社会科学家和心理学家永远都持有不同的观点和态度，但当我们着手实施一个政策或者商业决定的时候，我希望我们可以集合他们所有的信息来创造出可以广泛测试解决方案的实验，以找出最佳方案。 The factors that affect human economic activity will remain many and complex, especially as we continue to change the world around us. Can we ever produce a single account of human nature? No. Can we get closer? I certainly hope so. 影响人类经济活动的因素会一直都复杂而繁多，特别是由于我们还在继续改变周围的世界。我们能否最终做出一份完整的的对人性的描述？不。我们能否趋近这一目标？我当然希望如此。 Dan Ariely is professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University 【丹·艾瑞里是美国杜克大学心理学和行为经济学的教授】http://www./rsa-better-the-devil-you-know.html |
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