There was an excellent Horizon on last night, about Decision making. There was a good part showing how we can be encouraged to take risk beyond the rational.

Premise is someone has £50 in notes, gives £20 to the subject and says you can have it and walk away, no conditions, walk away when you want. But you can gamble if you want to to get the remaining £30, most people walk.

Give the person the £50 in notes in their hand first, then take £30 off them, same conditions, most will gamble to try and get the other £30, even though they're not any better off riskwise or materially than the first group.

Lots more interesting stuff in the programme about how we rationalise our decision making, despite evidence which contradicts the decision we made.

Here's the link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes...d/tx/decisions/

Introduction

Tuesday 12th February 2008, 9pm, BBC Two

We are bad at making decisions. According to science, our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice. And that's assuming that we haven't already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!

Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil!

What I found most fascinating about this programme was the research shown when people were asked to hold a hot or cold drink before being thrust into an interview scenario. All those that were holding cold drinks were negative and the ones holding hot drinks were postive. This tells me that if going for an interview and you are offered a tea/ Coffee, Have one but shun the offer of water. Same principle if you are out sharking and your target offers you to come up for a coffee. Game on