I’m reading another of those books that covers the overlap between psychology and economics and so I’m awash with terms like cognitive ease, utility, prospect theory and regression to the mean but I’ve just realised that my own behaviour says something about perception of value. Maybe by the time I’ve finished the book I will know what.
While I am taking a few days off work I have been buying the Times. I do the cryptic crossword (or as much as I can manage) and then some of the other puzzles – the two killer sudokus, the kakuro, the two futoshikas and the cell block thing. I might even do the normal sudokus and the easy crossword sometimes. After that, the paper goes in the bin, unread.
Basically I pay £1 for 80 pages of newsprint and only look at 4 of them, but I consider it good value because I’m not very good at the crossword so it keeps me occupied for quite a while. A pound for a couple of hours of distraction is not bad.
If the newsagent sold a single sheet of paper that just contained all the puzzles I do for a pound I would probably not want to pay a pound for it, even though I would get axactly the same use out of it. It is totally irrational, but completely understandable I think.
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