Annie Duke Quotes

Over the past forty years, researchers in well over a hundred subsequent studies have replicated and expanded on Thaler's initial work. The early demonstrations of the endowment effect in the lab were quite simple. In one of Jack Knetsch's early experiments, students signed up for the task of completing a questionnaire. Before filling it out, one group of participants received their payment in the form of a coffee mug. A second group received payment in the form of a big chocolate bar. (A third group was offered a choice between the two as a fresh decision with no prior ownership of either. This group split pretty evenly, favoring the mug 56%–44%.) Knetsch wanted to know whether ownership of the mug or the chocolate bar among the first two groups would change how the participants valued those items. To do that, after completing the questionnaire, he gave the participants in those groups a chance to switch their payment for the other item. In other words, the students with the mug could trade for the chocolate bar, and the students with the chocolate bar could trade for the mug. If there was no effect of ownership, you would expect that the first two groups, after trading when they preferred the other item, would end up with the same proportion of mugs and chocolate bars as those who came to the decision fresh. About half the participants in each group would trade, perhaps slightly more in the group that started with the chocolate bar and slightly fewer in the group starting with the mug. But that's not what Knetsch found. It turned out that endowment to an item, even for such a brief period of time, had quite a strong effect on how much value they attached to the items. Of those given the mug, 89% declined to trade it for the chocolate bar. Among those given the chocolate, 90% favored the chocolate and only 10% traded it for the mug.

The lesson here is that we shouldn't wait to be forced to find a Plan B. We should always be doing some exploration, especially because sometimes Plan B can turn out to be better than the thing you're already pursuing.

In addition to accountability and an interest in accuracy, the charter should also encourage and celebrate a diversity of perspectives to challenge biased thinking by individual members. Jonathan Haidt, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, is a leading expert in exploring group thought in politics. Haidt, in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, built on Tetlock's work, connecting it with the need for diversity. "If you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth."

The next time that you find yourself saying, "I'm just not ready to decide yet," what you should actually say is "For now I think that the status quo is still the best choice." Maybe you need more information to know whether to switch. But what shouldn't stop you from quitting (or getting that information) is that it's too scary to switch because loss aversion is too intense.

And the effect is stronger the more the ticket costs. Imagine if, instead of $95, you had spent $150 or $250 or $500. As the price tag grows, so does the effect of sunk costs.

A lot of experience can be an excellent teacher. A single experience, not so much.

not all situations are appropriate for truthseeking, nor are all people interested in the pursuit.

Figure out the hard thing first. Try to solve that as quickly as possible. Beware of false progress.

A necessary part of becoming a better decision-maker is learning from experience. Experience contains the lessons for improving future decisions. Resulting causes you to learn the wrong lessons.

Experience can be an effective teacher. But, clearly, only some students listen to their teachers.

RESULTING A mental shortcut in which we use the quality of an outcome to figure out the quality of a decision.

What I've generally found is that two people whose positions on an issue are far apart will move toward the middle after a debate or skilled explanation of the opposing position. Engaging in this type of exchange creates an understanding of and appreciation for other points of view much deeper and more powerful than just listening to the other perspective. Ultimately, it gives us a deeper understanding of our own position.

It doesn't so much matter where we end up as how we got there. What has happened in the recent past drives our emotional response much more than how we are doing overall. That's how we can win $100 and be sad, and lose $100 and be happy.

I'm going to keep developing this product unless I fail to hit clear benchmarks within the next two months that I've set with my quitting coach.

The actual outcome casts a shadow over your ability to remember what you knew at the time of the decision.