Tim Harford Quotes

And your brain doesn't naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows how to play bridge. "for example," people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Well maybe a great bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that's a trained response. Ordinary people, subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.

I don't gamble, because winning a hundred dollars doesn't give me great pleasure. But losing a hundred dollars pisses me off.

When I was very young, coming into the Sunderland side, if we got beaten, I'd be very down. I'd go home, and it would drag on for days, I'd be thinking about the game. I was from Sunderland, felt things like a fan, and got really down.

Now that I've won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last long as the bad. Not even close.

I take losses very personal and very serious.

You forget your victories, but you remember the losses.

The brains of humans contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news.

Fear makes you do stupid things.

I'm pretty mad at horror films for ruining my childhood.

How nice it would be to breeze through life and just brush things off. I never read reviews because I hate to lose more than I like to win; I experience negative emotions far greater than positive ones.

The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory.

Defeats are always tough, whatever you have lost, and they affect me the same way they affect anyone who loses a match - no more or less.

When I lose a big pot, I go a little crazy.

People react differently to hearing 'Procedure X has a 70 percent chance of survival' and 'Procedure Y has a 30 percent chance of death.' Phrased that way, people flock to Procedure X, even though the numbers are the same.

The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.

The perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior.

Anger is the right response to something that is so wrong. But don't let the anger and pain and loss you feel prevent you from forgiving him and removing your hands from around his neck.

When people think of the outcomes of their decisions, they think much more short term than that. They think in terms of gains and losses.

The fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

I know that experts say you're more likely to get hurt crossing the street than you are flying, but that doesn't make me any less frightened of flying. If anything, it makes me more afraid of crossing the street.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.

Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke: you have made an enormous commitment to something. You have poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think, "Now it has to work. If I put in just a little more, then it will work."

I don't pay attention. I don't read stuff or message boards because you definitely get affected. You can read a hundred great comments, amazing comments, and have one bad one and that is all you can focus on and it wrecks your day. It says something about negativity and how it draws us somehow.

He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.