But you’re not alone. We all do it. We all eat more than we say we will, or procrastinate about that trip to the dentist, or drive out of our way to save a few cents on fuel for our cars.
This kind of irrational decision making is a focus of behavioral economics, a field that incorporates psychology, economics, and other disciplines to better understand how we make decisions. At the University of Utah, I teach a class that applies behavioral economics to health policy.
Usually, we focus in class on the irrational decisions made by people in their daily lives, the overeating or procrastinating or driving detours.