Barack Obama's name has come up quite a lot in relation to behavioural economics
In the video article below, Dan Ariely discussses some explanations for Obama's appeal. One explanation he suggests is a human tendency to fill in lack of knowledge about someone with optimistic thoughts
http://seattlest.com/2008/02/27/dan_ariely_brin.php
Ariely suffered horrific burns while a trainee in the army. He writes about this below
http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/mypain.pdf
His paper are available below though with some broken links. The link with the MIT Media Lab is very interesting.
http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/papers.shtml
His ingeniously titled paper "Tom Sawyer and the Construction of Value" refers to a passage from the Twain novel quoted below from the paper. It refers to a case where Tom is embarrased to have to paint a fence in front of this friends but when they show he pretends to be enjoying it. His act is so convincing that his friends end up paying him to have a go and also enjoy it.
Tom “had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing
difficult to attain.”
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