I met Don when he was a fellow at Stanford and I was a grad student. He is one of the most intelligent, funny, and interesting people I know.

When he was in high school, he made movies… a couple of which were shown on Saturday Night Live. As a young academic physician, he determined that memories of uncomfortable events (e.g., colonoscopy) are mostly related to peak level of discomfort and how the event ended. (This involved asking patients undergoing a colonoscopy every 30 seconds or so how they were feeling. And if there’s nothing more uncomfortable than having a colonoscopy, it’s got to be having a colonoscopy while an overeager researcher is asking you how it feels twice a minute.) The implication of that study is that you can make a colonoscopy more attractive by — get this — leaving the colonoscope just barely in place at the end (of the procedure, that is) and lengthening the procedure. He then went on to prove this to be the case with a randomized controlled trial. (Isn’t science fun?)

But Don’s work goes beyond discomfort and invasive procedures. He’s shown that winning an Academy Award increases life expectancy if you’re an actor, but shortens it if you’re a writer. He’s discovered that medical school class presidents are more successful professionally than their non-presidential peers, but that they live 2.4 years less on average. He’s cracked the code on why the other lane of traffic always appears to be moving more quickly than the one you’re in. He’s shown that presidential elections kill about two dozen people (due to driving, not arguments over dinner), but that marathons on the whole save lives (i.e., the sudden cardiac deaths caused by the event are more than offset by the reduction in traffic deaths due to roads being closed).

Importantly, Don has also studied the use of cell phones on traffic accidents. (I am a fan of my cell phone — especially when I am driving — and I have to begrudgingly admit that the study was very well done. You might reasonably decide that the benefits of using the cell phone outweigh the risks, but it’s hard to argue that those risks are nonexistent.) Interestingly, the issue seems to be one of distraction rather than mechanics. The human brain has a limited bandwidth, so the whole “hands free” thing may not solve the fundamental problem: Regardless of whether you do the dialing or it’s voice activated, our minds seem to be somewhere else when we’re engaged in a conversation.

So it was with interest that I read the same New York Times piece that Julie highlighted in the previous blog. The original article noted that a handful of companies have services that use GPS and other methods to determine when you’re in a moving car, and turn off your phone for you. (This means you can sign up for an anti-service service, I suppose.)

As I read the piece, I noted several features relating to the application of behavioral economics:

• Intuition has significant limits, especially when it comes to intuition about thinking. In thinking through a solution to the cell phone problem, we conclude that the risk associated with cell phone use is one of coordination, and that a hands-free approach will solve the problem. When we think about thinking, we engage the part of our brain that’s rarely in use when we’re actually behaving. Driving and engaging in a conversation apparently draw on a common cognitive resource, and one that’s not obvious when we think about it.
• Self-control is inherently challenging. During planning, the benefits (e.g., getting through a boring commute by talking to a colleague) and costs (e.g., risk of slamming into that car in front of you) are both in the future and therefore weigh equally. While driving, however, the benefits are certain and loom large.
• Precommitment may help. During the planning phase, new technology (i.e., the companies cited in the article) make it possible to alter set of available options (or the payoffs associated with them) in the future. That is, you can tie yourself to the mast (metaphorically) to avoid bad behavior in the future.
• Sticks (losses) are more powerful than carrots (gains). The article noted that some insurance companies are offering discounts for people who use the precommitment devices. My guess is that they would get more people to enroll in the services if they imposed a premium increase on those that didn’t sign up for the services than a discount for those who did.

P.S. Don: if you’re out there, give me a call. I’ll be in my car with my cell phone handy.

Show me a writer who has never stared blankly at a computer screen while waiting for the first bolt of inspiration to strike, and I’ll show you a plagiarist. Writing anything – a poem, a novel, a glib blog* filled with asterisks and digressions – is hard, thankless, ego-crushing work. With so many more enjoyable ways to spend your time, it’s a wonder anyone writes anything. (Even now, I’m fighting the urge to take an impromptu lunchtime trip to Guitar Center.)

So what are writers to do? Well, they can Write or Die. As you might guess, WoD is pretty much the polar opposite of thefuntheory.com (discussed in this space yesterday). Rather than combating hyperbolic discounting with some attempt at amusement, WoD is all about consequences. I’ll turn it over to WoD’s evil genius, Dr. Wicked:

Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.

Many people find themselves unable to write consistently. I believe that this is because their reason to write is intangible. For instance, I want to write and finish a book because I want to be published and make a living as a writer. That goal is a long way away so I often find it difficult to sit down to the task of writing.

To give people a tangible reason to write, WoD features three consequence modes. In the wimpiest mode, a politely worded text box appears and encourages you to keep writing. In the not too hot/not too cold mode, you hear an annoying sound until you resume. In the harshest mode, the words that you already have written disappear.

It’s a twisted application of loss aversion, emphasizing people’s dislike for negative consequences more than their desire for rewards. Writers are a fairly warped lot, so it makes some sense for them … but the healthcare industry probably shouldn’t take its cues from someone named Dr. Wicked.

* Those two words side-by-side don’t look like English, do they?