Teaching Activity: Being Choosey - Choice Architecture

This behavioural economics teaching activity looks at exploring “choice architecture”, and whether the number of options given to people affects their decision.

According to standard neoclassical economics, the number of choices should not influence the outcome of a rational decision maker. Hopefully, this classroom experiment will show that the presentation of options can and does affect the decisions made by humans.

All of the examples in this resource have been adapted from the experimental work carried out by Dan Ariely, Ariel Rubinstein, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnemann. The outcomes of their experiments are noted at the back of the resource, as an additional handout for students.