Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Supposedly Irrelevant Factors

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | October 26th, 2015

In May, Richard Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s business school, wrote an article for the New York Times that clearly lays out how much of our behavior, which we’d like to think is rationally driven, simply is not. It’s titled, “Unless You Are Spock, Irrelevant Things Matter in Economic Behavior,” and available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/upshot/unless-you-are-spock-irrelevant-things-matter-in-economic-behavior.html?_r=0. In the article, Thaler details the significant effect that supposedly irrelevant factors (SIFs) have on decisions that we make. Accepting the validity of SIFs is key to really understanding human behavior. People do not necessarily act in a logical way because consciously or unconsciously they let SIFs determine what they do. When they’re making a decision, all sorts of things they should ignore steer the actions they take. Thaler provides this concise example of overcoming the SIFs that prevent people from saving for their retirement: “Knowledgeable employers have …