A Sneak Preview of The World Development Report 2015: Mind and mindsets
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The World Development Report 2015 is based on three main ideas: people think fast, relying on intuition more often than careful analysis; thinking employs mental models rooted in particular cultures, with the result that context has large effects on human judgment and behavior; and social emotions and social norms motivate much of what people do.
This richer understanding of decision-making emerging from contemporary research, suggests that development professionals and policymakers need to look more deeply inside the economic actor, at the individual’s mental processes. They also need to look outside the individual, at the cultural mental models, social contexts and norms that enable and constrain how people think. (And beware that they themselves bring to their work mental models that influence their ability to process information.)
The main message of the Report is that is that every policy rests on explicit or implicit assumptions about how people make choices, and that those assumptions are incorrect more often than we believe. It demonstrates that new policy ideas based on a richer view of decision-making can yield high returns in fields such as addressing poverty, finance, productivity, health, children, and climate change. The Report tells two tales. The first is cautionary. It emphasizes the need to understand context and a more complex set of human motivations before designing policy. The second tale is hopeful. In recognizing previously unrecognized cognitive and social processes, it points to new opportunities for promoting development.
Varun Gauri is Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank and Co-director of the World Development Report 2015. His current research examines how legal institutions and conceptions of justice and human rights affect human welfare. Gauri is on the Scientific Committee of the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty.
This plenary presentation is free and open to all!