Zigging to the bottom
How can a free, competitive market collapse into every player offering the same unsatisfactory offer? A story of three proverbs
Psychology
Koenfucius.
Essays on behavioral economics, psychology, and the philosophy of everyday life.
Recent essays
30 of 38Give me strength!
There is a limit to our physical capacity, but how close can we get to it… and how do we tap into our reserves?
The price of a principle
When we make a purchase, we often pay a surcharge for our principles. But how much precisely we are willing to spend on them is a mystery – even to ourselves
The groups we don’t realize we joined
We belong to far more groups than we realize — and we can acquire new ones in an instant. But what is it that activates our group instinct, and why?
Don’t fear the market
Markets are a powerful coordination mechanism. Why do we insist on getting in the way?
A tale of two buttons
A simple binary choice with no right answer reveals something far more interesting than selfishness or virtue
At second sight – when facts deceive
We may say we want the facts, but as soon as we get them, we give them meaning, and promptly treat fact and meaning as one
Paying to be right
How I paid a price for a retailer’s 99p pricing error, and why it was worth it (and not irrational)
Casting judgment
A controversy over a casting decision reveals how we sometimes try to rationalize ideological or identitarian positions, and allow peripheral concerns to eclipse the essence of the matter
Assumptions – our invisible load-bearers
Underneath the usual ingredients of decision making (facts, goals, boundary conditions etc) there is another one, unseen, quietly doing most of the work
The essence of deciding
When all the tricks and tools are stripped away, what do we rely on to make decisions? The decisions surrounding the death of a loved one offer a hint
The exits nobody plans for
Many of our decisions are not intended to stretch indefinitely into the future. Yet they often do. Does that matter?
Why we follow some laws (but not others) without being made to
Laws that are not enforced “have no teeth”, they say – notably, recently, international law. Yet humans learned to cooperate successfully well before there were formal laws. What is going on?
When
Sometimes we change our mind. Sometimes we judge others for doing something we believe they shouldn’t. But without answering one simple question, we simply show we haven’t thought it through
The unlearnable song
My barbershop chorus has been rehearsing the same song for a year – and we still sing wrong notes. That reveals weaknesses in how we make decisions and learn
A reasonable illusion of objectivity
Rules are often invoked as a neutral arbiter in a conflict… as long as they are reasonable. But who decides what is reasonable?
Moral dilemmas without solutions
Some dilemmas stem from the conflict between different moral frameworks. Others are much tougher because they cut almost literally through our heart
Incorrigible self-persuaders
Humans’ cognitive capacity is unparalleled. But are we using it all that well when pre-cooked conclusions are available?
The Fairness Cascade
When people reject profitable opportunities, it’s easy to blame irrationality. But that may be too hasty a conclusion – the opposite may be the case.
Why (almost) no transaction is simple
Economic transactions have an air of simplicity: if you ask no more than what I am offering, or if what I offer is at least what you are willing to accept, we can trade–but it's not always that simple
The paradox of the small club supporter
A remarkable event in English football (aka soccer) last weekend reveals the hidden logic of our tribal instincts
The Moralization Gambit
Sometimes, when facing dilemmas that oppose means and ends, rather than confronting their complexity, we resort to the strategic invocation of a principle to resolve the tension
Koenfucius Top-10 most read of 2025
A diverse bunch of essays that attracted the most readers
Overruling rules
Our lives are steered by rules, perhaps more than we realize. But it is not the rules we follow, but the exceptions we make that reveal who we are
Selfish gifts
If we’re honest, we’d have to admit that sometimes, when giving gifts to others, we take into account the effect on us too. But is that always helpful?
Seize the day… or save the best for last?
Conflicting maxims may confuse us, but could they reveal evolutionary adaptations that show up as contradictory intuitions in different contexts?
How our prosperity is based on ignorance
… and what resolving that ignorance might do to our prosperity
The Psychology of Budgets
Citizens’ attention for what governments are up to tends to peak around budget time – a good moment for spotting behavioural quirks and psychological traps on both sides
(Well) beyond the trade-off
Decision making is often seen as primarily a matter of making trade-offs. Might that be too simplistic a view?
“A problem for later” – the mystery of institutional procrastination
Humans have an emotional short-term bias that values the immediate more and discounts the future. Institutions don’t – yet they can procrastinate too