Framing Decisions: Decision-Making that Accounts for Irrationality, People and Constraints

Preface

I’m a “self-pincher,” meaning that I pinch myself from time to time. The pinching is not a product of masochism or a symptom of an exotic neurological disorder (I hope). Rather, it is driven by a desire to determine whether I am awake or dreaming when I come across things that many people accept as true but don’t make sense to me.

My self-pinching proclivity is not new. Following are examples of events that triggered self-pinching actions over the years:

• As a child, when my parents told me about the activities of the tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus
• As a young adult living in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s, when for two years I witnessed a large portion of the American public embrace Nixon’s story that he had nothing to do with ...