Mood Matters – Feeling Good

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A recent Facebook conversation got me thinking.

My friend had just done the Common Ratio Effect experiment (see previous blog: Are You Consistent? - Mad World), and was pleased that she had been consistent. However in relation to her answers, she noted that:

“lol... depends on circumstances...”

Which is true. Our answers one minute may vary wildly from the next minute. One day we may be feeling positive and more prone to taking risks, another day we may be more conservative and risk-averse. 

So, therefore, aren’t experiments a load of rubbish? Surely they can’t capture human behaviour accurately, because human behaviour is inherently dependent on our mood?

However, economists solve this problem by repeating the experiments on lots and lots of people (and use different experiments to see if phenomena are ‘robust’). Thus any mood variability should balance out over large populations. And remember, economists test to see if an aspect of behaviour can be shown to be systematic among us humans which does not usually require literally everyone to exhibit it. Anomalies are allowed. It does not matter if you answer differently according to how you feel because an experiment will never rely on your answers alone.

There are other criticisms of experiments (which will have to wait for another blog), but the “it all depends on how I feel” objection, while being absolutely correct, does not actually challenge the validity of experiments.

Recommended listening:

Feeling Good by Nina Simone