经济学人:合理的怀疑:只见部分,不辩总体(1)

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　　In thinking about money, people tend to compartmentalise, grouping certain types of spending or income together. 在考虑钱的时候，人们往往会区别对待，将某类开支和收入归总起来。

　　In some cases this might amount to a strategy for managing imperfect self-control (as in the credit-card debt example). 在有些情况下，这或许相当于为了管理不完全的自我控制的一种策略（就像在信用卡债务的例子中那样）。

　　More broadly, it reflects the human tendency to tackle cognitive¹ problems in pieces, rather than as a whole. 推而广之，这反映的人类那种只见部分、不辩总体的解决认知问题的倾向。

　　When petrol prices fall, for example, drivers sometimes switch from regular-grade petrol to premium² (rather than use savings³ out of the “petrol” category somewhere else). 例如，当油价下降时，司机常常是从常用等级的汽油换到高等级的汽油（而不是使用从别处的汽油分类中省下来的钱）。

　　Because of this mental pigeonholing⁴, taxi drivers who aim to earn a certain amount each day may stop work early on busy days and later on slow ones,  由于这种心理上的分门别类，目标是每天挣一定数量的钱的出租车司机有可能在繁忙的日子早早收工、在清闲的日子晚收工，

　　though the opposite approach would maximise earnings⁵ per hour. 尽管相反的策略会让每小时的收入最大化。

　　Mr Thaler, with his colleague Hersh Shefrin, understood choices as battles between two competing cognitive forces:  赛勒和他的同事赫什·舍夫林把选择理解为两种相互竞争的认知力量之间的战斗：

　　a “doer” part of the brain focused on short-term rewards, and a “planner” focused on the long term. 大脑中“做事”的那一部分关注的是短期回报；“计划”那一部分关注的是长期回报。

　　Willpower can help suppress the doer's urges, but exercising restraint is costly⁶. 意志力可能有助于抑制做事的冲动，但是，践行约束花费不菲。

　　This internal struggle is continuous, so individual preferences are not constant over time (whether you have another beer may depend on the state of the brain at a given moment). 这种内部战斗连续不断，因而，个人喜好不是长时间不变的（是否再来一杯可能取决于大脑在某一特定时刻的状态）。

　　It also means that presenting people with a “choice architecture” which favours the planner over the doer can have big effects on behaviour. 这也表明，给人们提供一种厚计划薄干事的“选择架构”可能对行为产生重大影响。

　　That insight became the basis for “nudging”. 这种深刻见解成为了“助推行为”的基础。

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