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Swoopo: Irrational escalation of commitment

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 2, 2008 ⋅ 27 comments
Swoopo: Irrational escalation of commitment

Swoopo, a new kind of “entertainment shopping” auction site, takes Martin Shubik’s classic Dollar Auction game to a whole new, automated, mass participation level. It’s an example of the escalation of commitment, or a sunk cost fallacy, where we increase our commitment (in this case with real money) even though (in this case) most users’ [...]

Learned down the gambling house

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 20, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments
Learned down the gambling house

Michael Shanks’ Ten Things class at Stanford – which looks like a brilliant application of anthropological and archaeological thinking to design and technology – generated a very interesting project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu analysing the architectures of control (psychological and physical) designed into both slot machines, and casinos themselves.
Slot machines
From ‘The psychology of [...]

Dependence

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 17, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments
Dependence

Karel Donk has some intriguing thoughts on ‘maximising the upside’ of life, by reducing dependence on other people, status and possessions, so that there is less to lose:
So one of the important things in life is to be as independent as possible and rely on very few things. After all, when it comes down to [...]

Limiting frequency of cigarette use

By Dan Lockton ⋅ December 30, 2006 ⋅ 9 comments
Limiting frequency of cigarette use

 Images from nicostopper.com and Popgadget
Nicostopper is an electronic dispenser which holds up to 10 cigarettes, and releases them one at a time at programmed intervals, to help pace and restrict the smoker. The screen “will also flash “self-help” messages each time to make you feel guilty as well” (Popgadget). It’s styled fairly discreetly to look [...]

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