Thursday, August 06, 2009

Had a request about yesterday's blog entry

Had a reader ask about the "temptation is stronger than we think" blog entry of yesterday.


Specifically about this part

"Dan Ariely makes a big point of this in his Predictably Irrational book. Specifically chapter 5 in which he reports on various questionnaires (but not actual behavior) that were filled out under various states of, uh, arousal. (I am not going to go into details, but suffice to say that chapter alone kept me from adopting the book for class, I was not sure what the response from university would be and opted to not get into a battle). I will state that in each case, as the arousal was greater, people swayed further from their what they said they would do when being rational."



First of all, I do think the University would have been OK with the book selection. So rest assured it is not formally censored. But that said, I am sure I did not want to have any controversy with an entirely new course that was not listed in time to be included in the catalog so already few are in the class.

Secondly, for those of you who would like the actual study that is was alluded to, here you go.

Dan Ariely and George Loewenstein (2006) “The Heat of the Moment: The Effect of Sexual Arousal on Sexual Decision Making”Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. 19 87-98.

It is from the Predictably Irrational Reference page. Which is excellent.

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