I have the right to learn what the Higher Being teaches

The more salient and visible information is, the more likely people are to notice. The easier it is for consumers to read disclosures, from the size of the typeface to how simple and direct the language, the more likely consumers will read it. And the more information is put into a comparative context--with this car you save $1,850 in fuel costs over five years compared to the average new vehicle--the more people are able to understand it. The same behavioral rules discussed in article 6 for people evaluations apply whenever we need to process information, particularly when the information is complex or unfamiliar. To increase the chances that we process it accurately, information needs to be salient, simple, and in comparative context. This is why, at least to a behavioral economist, the energy labels on appliances and cars sold in the United States qualify as beautiful. The information is provided comparatively so that customers can calibrate, for example, the operating cost of a specific car relative to others. In addition, complicated metrics such as MPG--miles per gallon--have been replaced by better ones. Because linear metrics are simpler than nonlinear ones. Miles per gallon is nonlinear: one gallon is saved per 100 miles if the MPG changes from ten to eleven or from thirty-three to fifty. As the liar lies, there are fluctuations in their body's autonomic nervous system. The ANS deals with bodily functions and can play a part in giving away the liar. When you're nervous, you will feel fluctuations in your nervous system, interpreting them as tingle or itches, causing you to fidget. There's also research spearheaded by R. Edward Geiselman, a psychology professor at UCLA, which shows that when people are dishonest, they engage in grooming behaviors. They play with their hair, check underneath their nails for dirt, and things like that. Giving Face When someone's lying to you, they might either look away or stare at a critical moment. They move their eyes about because they're trying to come up with something to say. Geiselman's research also found that people tend to look away for a bit when they lie.

Everything eventually tilts back to the mean, even in cases where there is a variation, it always moves back to the average. Satisficing This is a strategy where the first option satisfies certain criteria, and we make that choice even if better choices may exist. For example, when prices of plane tickets plummet, you buy a relatively cheaper ticket even though chances are you could find better deals if you searched more. While heuristics are not a formal problem-solving method, they can be used either alone or combined with others to sometimes find a solution, mainly through a process of trial and error. Although useful, over-reliance on them can cause us to make incorrect judgements or biases. That is because they might offer rapid solutions, but that doesn't mean that these solutions are long-term in nature. To fully understand the flaws and complications of heuristics, we can look at a hypothetical case of Audrey. Up till now, Audrey had assumed her good health was a result of these vitamins and her friend agreed; Since she has a strong emotional investment in the decision (literally life or death), it is likely that the choice that she makes is irrational or not based on thorough enough research. Gallons per hundred miles, or GPhM, gives customers a better sense of what is going on. In this car, you go one hundred miles and you consume this many gallons; GPhM is linearly related to consumption and cost. For example, the 2015 Toyota Prius is a hybrid vehicle that runs on gasoline with a suggested retail price of about $24,000 to $30,000. The average gallons per 100 miles are 2. If you have a Toyota Prius, the EPA reports that you save $4,500 in fuel costs over five years compared to the average new vehicle. One of the most convincing advocates for simplification is Cass Sunstein, formerly head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, also known as America's Regulatory Czar under President Barack Obama. His wonderful article Simpler, published shortly after he left office, uses examples of many of the simplifications he helped oversee and provides helpful guidelines on how we can simplify our communications and make them more effective. These include a number of disclosure requirements designed to protect students, consumers, and investors by ensuring that they know before they owe. The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, for example, requires clear disclosure of annual percentage rates and finance charges, and advance notice of changes.

The 2015 University of Michigan study also found that liars stare a lot more than those who are truthful. Interestingly, 70 percent of the clips they viewed showed the liars staring directly at the people they lied to. Even with all these studies, there is still room for debate about eye contact and lying. Plos One published a study in 2012 that discredited the idea that people look in a certain direction as they lie. Sure, maybe you might read too much of nothing into someone else's behavior, but you cannot discount the eyes, as they often hold the truth. When someone is holding back information from you, then they might roll their lips back, so they almost aren't visible. It's often because they're holding back facts or trying to keep their emotions in check. The UCLA study showed that someone lying to you would often purse their lips when you ask them questions that they find sensitive. The pursed lips say they don't want to talk about the subject at the moment. Skin complexion also gives liars away. She will use heuristics and give in to her common pattern of thinking. Because she is emotionally attached to vitamins, she will likely give in to her bias in favor of what her friend said and reject the study entirely, becoming a victim of affective heuristics. Hypochondria itself is a mental illness where a person has a deeply irrational fear of illness, so Audrey's fear and anxiety is likely to be high in any case. The vitamins give her a sense of security (which may very well be false). This way of thinking will further be compounded because of another category of shortcuts known as intuitive toxicology. This is people's incorrect conclusion that chemical compounds are either entirely safe or entirely dangerous, there is no in-between. This sort of simplified decision making also causes people to ignore the complexity that is associated with chemical health risks. If Audrey falls prey to this all-or-nothing mentality, she will either think they are fully harmless or too toxic. This kind of belief will increase her emotional investment even more. This kind of heuristic links belief about risk and benefits (ie, if people believe something is a high risk, they also believe the benefit to be low, and they find it very difficult to see that one item can be both).

Your monthly credit card statements now include a minimum payment warning explaining how long it would take you to pay off the card by submitting just the minimum and how much this would cost. To make customers even smarter about debt, Mike Luca argued that this transparency should be extended from paper copies to online statements. He shows how easily credit card companies could create an online tool that would help customers understand the long-term implications of different payment amounts. Sunstein was also involved in helping Americans rethink what they eat. For a great many reasons, the government wished Americans to be healthier than not, and encouraging more Americans to eat healthier food seemed, well, low-hanging fruit. Except for many years it wasn't. Since 1992 the US Department of Agriculture had used a food pyramid to help Americans understand how many fruits and vegetables to eat as compared to, say, meats. It turns out the pyramid did not work well for most people. In their article Switch, Chip and Dan Heath didn't mince words: the pyramid's message is opaque . Sunstein was in a position to do something about it. When someone is talking, and they go white or pale, it could mean that they're not truthful, as blood rushes out of their face. Are they dry or sweaty? The autonomic nervous system will often cause a liar to sweat in their T-area (the forehead, upper lip, chin, and areas around the mouth. You can tell by observing how often they squint or blink, and whether they swallow hard, or bite or lick their lips. The Voice Behind the Words When you're dealing with a nervous person, it's not unusual for the vocal cords to tighten up. This is a natural response to being in a stressful situation, and it causes the voice to become high-pitched. There might also be a creak in their voice. When someone clears their throat in these situations, it could be because they're trying to deal with the uncomfortably tight muscles, and that could also be a sign that they're lying. If you notice that they've suddenly turned up the volume, maybe they're getting defensive about something.

In this case, if Audrey believed that her vitamins are high risk, she'd convince herself that they are a low benefit and begin to believe that she was actively harming herself and that her vitamin taking regimes had no benefit at all. In such a case, she'd have to question her life-long consumption and would be more inclined to prove the study wrong. That's because we think more deeply about evidence when it contradicts our beliefs. In this case, she is likely to be skeptical about the report, its findings, and its methodology, because she disagreed with the conclusion of the study. In certain cases where people's beliefs are challenged by conflicting points of view, they start relying on their prior beliefs to guide them. Now to prove that she was right in taking vitamins all along, she would start looking for evidence that validates her belief. She will easily believe the evidence that agrees with her point of view but aggressively scrutinize contrary evidence. She could also use a representative heuristic to measure her opinion. She might base her opinion about the effects of heuristics on her previous experience of them, where they alleviated her concerns about her health. She would not be required to think deeply about the nuances of her decision (ie, how much she should be taking, to what level they were helpful, where they became harmful, what damage she may have already inflicted on herself through continued usage). Accordingly, the Obama administration searched for a better image. And sometimes, simple really means simple: the pyramid was out and in its place was a dinner plate. Unevenly quartered to recommend a healthy balance of vegetables, fruit, protein, and grains, it also showed a nearby glass representing dairy. The government's MyPlate image is a great example of effectively transparent information. Unlike the pyramid, MyPlate is a mirror to your own plate, and the ease of comparison--perhaps you are used to seeing half of your plate taken up with steak rather than the suggested slightly less than a quarter--is immediate. And revelatory. As a yogurt lover, I confess to being a bit shocked by how small the dairy cup is. MyPlate is not the only much-celebrated example of successful disclosure to encourage healthier eating. Recall our visitors weighing dining choices who opened this article. Public displays of hygiene ratings in restaurants have proven a highly effective intervention in transparency.