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  3. Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human beha

Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human beha

游客2024-05-20  27
问题     Even the best-intentioned policies can fall prey to the oddity of human behavior, as a new study of credit-card repayment finds. In order to stop borrowers from being hit by an accumulation of unpaid interest whenever they fail to pay their bill, there are laws requiring credit-card companies to specify a minimum payment in each statement. But these may do more harm than good, suggests Neil Stewart, a psychologist at Warwick University.
    Mr. Stewart was studying a phenomenon known as "anchoring". Psychologists have found that being exposed to numbers, even irrelevant ones, can affect people’s decisions. For example, diners tend to spend more in a restaurant named "Caf6 97" than in one named "Cafe 17". Since minimum payments on credit-card statements are usually small amounts, Mr. Stewart wondered whether seeing an actual amount might make people pay less than they would otherwise have done. That is exactly what he found.
    Mr. Stewart presented 413 people with fake credit-card bills of ￡ 435.76 that were identical — except that only half mentioned a minimum payment of ￡ 5.42. Participants were asked how much they would pay.
    Among those inclined to pay the bill in full, the presence of the minimum payment hardly made any difference. However, those who wanted to pay just part of it handed over 43% less on average when presented with a minimum payment. In the real world, this would roughly double interest charges.
    Economists will be interested in the results. Behavioral economists advocate "nudging (用肘 轻推) people in the right direction by subtly altering the choices that they are presented with. The insistence on minimum payments is a variation on this theme. Supposedly, those confronted by minimum-payment requirements should pay at least that much. In fact Mr. Stewart’s work suggests that people who would have paid a lot, paid less. In economics, as in life, nudging needs to be done carefully. [br] The minimum payment laws originated from the______ strategy of behavioral economists.
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答案 nudging
解析 根据关键词behavioral economists定位在文章末段。该段第二句中提到了行为经济学家的“轻推”策略：悄悄改变提供给人们的选择项，轻推(nudging)人们往正确的方向前进。后面一句说，最低还款额度条款就是这种指导思想的一个变体(a variation on this theme)，也就是这种指导思想的一个应用。题干中的originated from对应原文中的a variation on，this theme指代的就是前面句中的nudging。
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