I recently participated in a Behavioral Economics MOOC on Coursera.org taught by Dan Ariely. I used to love listening to Dan's conversations with Kai Ryssdal on NPR/Marketplace on my drive home several years ago. And I had already been through each of his books, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Truth About Dishonesty. So, I thought the class would be a lot of fun.
A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior
Most of the topics, research and experiments that were covered in the class were ones straight out of the books, but there were also interesting references to research papers to see more details about how the experiments were carried out and the exact findings of the research. It is evident that Dan and his team put a lot of effort into building and presenting a very high quality MOOC.
Impressions of Coursera
I have to say I'm a fan of Coursera. I think it is very cool that they have worked out a deal with so many top colleges and universities to offer outstanding content to the masses for free! The Coursera website is easy to navigate. Access to course materials, video lectures, and discussions is fantastic. The quizzes associated with the lectures and reading assignments were straight forward and engaging.
The one area that I find to be rather disheartening is the peer grading process. I understand that there is no way for a professor and a couple of graduate students to grade tens of thousands of essays and writing assignments, but there seems to be a rather large flaw in the the grading criteria for these non-multiple choice assignments. The problem is subjectivity of the grader on the written assignment.
Peer Grading
After submitting the written assignment, each student was asked to grade three other assignments based on the following criteria:
- Did the student identify and describe a behavioral problem?
- Did the student correctly identify and describe research that is relevant to the problem?
- Did the student propose a research-based solution?
I find it odd that someone as fluent in measuring the results of research and experiments as professor Ariely (which are often dependent upon how questions are phrased, the order in which the questions appear and the types of choices presented), would purposefully introduce subjectivity into this grading process by allowing the grader a three point scale for each of these criteria. Unless I'm mistaken, these appear to be simple "Yes/No" questions, yet the grader was given a range of choices from 1 (didn't meet the criteria) to 3 (met the criteria) thereby adding unnecessary subjectivity.
For the first criteria,
either the student described a behavioral problem or they didn't.
Answering this question should not be based upon the grader's bias as to
whether they perceive the issue to truly be a problem or not. If the student articulated a
topic in the context of human behavior, how can anyone honestly give them less
than full credit for this criteria?
The second criteria possibly could have been worded more precisely as to convey the intent of the question, such as, "Did the student utilize material from the course reading assignments that supports the claim of the behavioral problem?"
The third criteria, again, is not asking for the grader's biased opinion as to whether or not they agree with the proposed solution. It is simply asking if the student proposed a solution within the context of the research covered by the course reading assignments. It is not the grader's responsibility to assess the viability of the proposed solution. It shouldn't be the grader's prerogative to judge the effectiveness of the proposed solution. I find it hard to believe that anyone would submit their written assignment if it were totally void of a proposed solution.
Proposed Solution for Peer Grading
Dear Coursera and prof. Ariely, to improve the quality of this course for the students, I believe an effort should be made to remove as much subjectivity from the peer grading process as possible. If you are going to ask "Yes/No" questions, then grade accordingly with "Yes/No" answers. If you want the written assignment to be based on a total of 9 points, then ask 9 "Yes/No" questions that are specific to the quality of the written assignment, such as:
- Did the student use the correct name for the problem (if the problem has a name we discussed in this course)?
- Did the student give a clear indication of why the behavior is problematic?
- Did the student tell us what the scale of the problem was?
- Did the student summarize the experiments and findings about this behavior? This should include only relevant experiments and findings.
- Did the student refer to experiments from the assigned readings and/or lectures?
- Did the student cite his or her sources?
- Did the student propose a solution?
- Did the student show the solution was based on existing behavioral research?
- Was the solution original? That is, did the student come up with plan that was not exactly like another we have studied?
By the way, these questions were provided as guidance for answering the original three criteria, but were left up to the subjectivity of the grader to incorporate within the faulty three point scale.
I also realize that grading any written assignment will inherently include some subjectivity of the grader, but the need to limit this subjectivity is only magnified by the fact that the graders in this case have no credibility on which to base their opinions (i.e. the students of a free online introduction class are most likely not "experts" on the subject of behavioral economics).
by Dan ArielyNarrated by: Simon Jones
Publisher: Harper Audio
Total Length: 7 Hours, 24 Minutes
Date Published: April 2, 2009
I first heard about Predictably Irrational on NPR while listening to the show Marketplace by American Public Media. Dan Ariely had a segment each week where he would discuss something from one of his experiments and how the results defy the general assumptions held by most people. I found Dan to be very entertaining to listen to, especially amid the context of the Great Recession. So, I decided to download Predictably Irrational to see if I was missing out on any other great insights in the world of Behavioral Economics.
The Decoy Effect
R
elativity is all about how we compare things. The example of the subscription to the Economist shows how most people don't really know what anything is worth, but when comparing two similar items it is easier to see the relative value of each. I love how it points out that, "Thinking is difficult and sometimes unpleasant." This is a vulnerability just waiting to be exploited.
The take away here is when you want to persuade someone towards a particular choice, one effective way to do so is by adding a similar, but less attractive option. When given this situation, Option A, Option B, and Option -B, most people will choose Option B.
"Free"
Here's a less than obvious calculation (well it wasn't obvious to me anyway). When given the choice between two products, I should compare the perceived value of each to the stated price and if the benefit of the higher priced product is worth the higher price to me, then I should choose that product. The difference in the price should be the difference in value (to me) of the two products. But, when one of the products is "free", the difference in value becomes much harder to justify. Ariely provides several examples of experiments where they offer a premium chocolate for $0.25 and an average chocolate for $0.01. If I value the premium chocolate by $0.24 more, then I should still be willing to pay the $0.24 for the premium chocolate even if the average chocolate is priced at "free".
Social Norms vs Market Norms
I found the topic of comparing social norms and market norms very interesting. It seems to me that there are many untapped solutions to everyday problems that are obfuscated by the fact that we are looking at the problem through only one of the possible lenses (social or market norms). Based on the research presented in Predictably Irrational, it can often be difficult to make the shift from one point of view to the other, or difficult to return to a particular point of view once that shift has been made.
Price of Placebo
"Before recent times, almost all medicines were placebos. Eye of the toad, wing of the bat, dried fox lungs, mercury, mineral water, cocaine, an electric current: these were all touted as suitable cures for various aliments. When Lincoln lay dying across the street from Ford's Theater, it is said that his physician applied a bit of 'mummy paint' to the wounds. Egyptian mummy, ground to powder, was believed to be a remedy for epilepsy, abscesses, rashes, fractures, paralysis, migraine, ulcers, and many other things. As late as 1908, 'genuine Egyptian mummy' could be ordered through the E. Merck catalog... We may think we're different now. But we're not. Placebos still work their magic on us."
Chapter 10 was one of my favorite chapters. The Placebo Effect has long been a fascination of mine, and Ariely's research puts some hard data to this question. The results show that when people pay more, they claim to receive greater benefits. This bias is extremely unfortunate, given that alternative solutions may actually be more effective and more holistic, but are excluded because they don't fall within popular opinion.
Reflections
Overall, I really enjoyed this audio book. It is chock-full of great examples and data from experiments on behavioral economics (many, many more than the ones I mentioned here). I have gone back and listened to several of the chapters over again in the past couple of years, as it provides some interesting alternate view points and topics of debate to insert into other research projects I've been working on. My only disappointment with it, I might have preferred the audio book more if it was read by the author.
