The Door Game and the pain of not letting go

Dan Ariely’s new book is now out and it is proving to be a great page-turner - brilliant for students who want to broaden their understanding of behavioural economics. The accompanying web site has a superb interactive game for people to try involving clicking on one of three doors to earn credits. In the game you are limited to fifty (50) clicks in total and the aim is to amass the highest total score. In one version, the size of the unclicked doors shrinks every time they are ignored. In the other, the size of the doors remains constant but you must still engage in a search to ascertain which doors carry the highest value from each click - the distribution of clicks varies by door.

I can imagine this becoming hugely popular in schools and collegese when we are teaching behavioural economics - so have a go. And also have a look at the other resources available on the Predictably Irrational web site!

Background to the game available from the Tierney Labs page on the New York Times web site - which is here (Free registration and login may be required)