Why Survival Rates Drop Even After Repairing Areas with Many Bullet Holes

Richard Chatterway 'First Reading of Behavioral Management'

During World War II, the Air Force leadership was troubled by the low survival rate of bomber crews. At one point, the survival rate was only 50%. They wanted to reinforce the aircraft to increase the chances of return. The military investigated the parts of returning aircraft that had the most bullet holes. They tried to reinforce the central fuselage, which had the most damage. However, Abraham Wald, a statistician who worked for the U.S. Air Force's Applied Mathematics Advisory Group, discovered a 'fatal error.' The bullet holes on returning planes were in the strongest parts, meaning that planes hit in critical areas did not return. This phenomenon is known in psychology as survivor bias.

Richard Thaler, author of the book Behavioral Management for Beginners (Across), argues that human decision-making is surprisingly irrational in this way. People are unexpectedly emotional and easily influenced by small nudges. For example, although London, UK, has a high arrest rate for murderers, making murder seem like an irrational act, there were as many as 130 murders in 2018. This shows that controlling murderous impulses was largely ineffective.

Of course, this is not always negative. When used well, it can produce positive outcomes. Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, reduced fraudulent insurance claims by about 15% by slightly modifying the insurance claim form. He added the phrase, "I swear that the information I provide is true."

In the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, Facebook installed a 'I Voted' button as part of a get-out-the-vote campaign, showing how many Facebook users had voted, which increased the vote count by 340,000. Showing the voting status of Facebook friends was four times more effective than just showing the total number of votes.

In 2004, the British Heart Foundation launched the 'Fat-Filled Cigarette Campaign,' which received great attention. They depicted a split cigarette filled with lumps of fat, resembling fat buildup in blood vessels. As a direct result of this campaign, more than 14,000 people quit smoking. A representative said, "We wanted smokers to reflexively imagine sticky substances accumulating in their arteries every time they saw a cigarette."

The reason why the English version of Google's website has an 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button next to the 'Google Search' button is similar. Pressing the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button skips the results list and goes straight to the top result page. According to Google, in 2007, only 1% of users used that button. Google does not show ads to that 1% of searches, so it loses advertising revenue. The cost amounts to $100 million (about 117.6 billion KRW) annually. Nevertheless, the button remains to "imply that Google will always provide the best results."

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