INSTITUTE FOR

preferences concerning psychology electives. Before making this decision a control group
was given only mean psychology course evaluations; others were, in addition, exposed to a
panel discussion by advanced psychology majors selected so that their course evaluations
corresponded to the mean. As in the Volvo thought experiment, vivid information played a
greater role than pallid information; compared to the control group, 'iose exposed to the
panel chose a higher fraction of courses rated above average. To counter the argument that
this bias might be due to thoughtlessness because of the unimportance of the decision,
Borgida and Nisbett note that the bias was greater for those who later entered the major than
for those who dropped out.
II. Procrastination
Procrastination provides the implest example of a situation in which there are repeated
errors of judgment due to unwarranted salience of some costs and benefits relative to others.
In this case each error of judgment causes a small loss, but these errors cumulatively result in
large losses over time and ultimately cause considerable regret on the part of the decision
maker.
Let me illustrate with a personal story and then show how such behavior can be
modelled. Some years back, when I was living in India for a year, a good friend of mine,
Joseph Stiglitz, visited me; because of unexpected. limitations on carry-on luggage at the time
of his departure, he left with me a box of clothes to be sent to him in the United States. Both
because of the slowness of transactions in India and my own ineptitude in such matters, I
estimated that sending this parcel would take a full day's work. Each morning for over eight
months I woke up and decided that the next morning would be the day to send the Stiglitz
box. This occurred until a few months before my departure when I decided to include it in
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