· Behavioural economics has been directed more to explaining choices than to changing them. Even if there is a sense in which people can be shown to be making poor decisions it is of course debatable whether it is appropriate to try to intervene. A relatively small literature has looked at remedies for various cognitive biases. Little of this is specifically applied to personal finance. · A number of the debiasing techniques in the literature involve encouraging thinking that is more critical. “Consider the opposite” encourages people to think why they may be wrong. This counteracts general tendencies to be overconfident.
