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  3. Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds.

Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds.

admin2012-05-28  93
问题     Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds. In order to stop borrowers from being hit by an accumulation of unpaid interest whenever they fail to pay their bill, there are laws requiring credit-card companies to specify a minimum payment in each statement. But these may do more harm than good, suggests Neil Stewart, a psychologist at Warwick University.
    Mr. Stewart was studying a phenomenon known as "anchoring". Psychologists have found that being exposed to numbers, even irrelevant ones, can affect people’s decisions. For example, diners tend to spend more in a restaurant named "Caf6 97" than in one named "Cafe 17". Since minimum payments on credit-card statements are usually small amounts, Mr. Stewart wondered whether seeing an actual amount might make people pay less than they would otherwise have done. That is exactly what he found.
    Mr. Stewart presented 413 people with fake credit-card bills of ￡ 435.76 that were identical — except that only half mentioned a minimum payment of ￡ 5.42. Participants were asked how much they would pay.
    Among those inclined to pay the bill in full, the presence of the minimum payment hardly made any difference. However, those who wanted to pay just part of it handed over 43% less on average when presented with a minimum payment. In the real world, this would roughly double interest charges.
    Economists will be interested in the results. Behavioral economists advocate "nudging (用肘 轻推) people in the right direction by subtly altering the choices that they are presented with. The insistence on minimum payments is a variation on this theme. Supposedly, those confronted by minimum-payment requirements should pay at least that much. In fact Mr. Stewart’s work suggests that people who would have paid a lot, paid less. In economics, as in life, nudging needs to be done carefully.
What’s the phenomenon of "anchoring"?
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答案Being exposed to numbers can affect people’s decisions．
解析 根据“anchoring”定位在第二段前两句话。第一句中提到了anchoring(定锚效应)；第二句说心理学家发现，看一些数字，甚至是无关的数字时会影响人们的决定；再后面就给出了一些例子。显然第二句是在解释第一句中出现的anchoring.题干要求说明定锚效应，将第二句话提取核心内容后即是答案。
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