魔法数字7：米勒法则的行为经济学分析:

米勒(1956)提出,人脑同时只能处理7±2个信息团,这一发现被称为米勒法则。虽然学者们对于米勒法则所指的魔法数字究竟是多少仍有争议,但人脑具有短期存储与信息处理限制这一事实已被学者们所公认。根据这一法则,人们在进行偏好排序时有同时处理项目数量的约束,这一约束对消费者进行商品束的偏好排序有着重要影响。本文通过一个两阶段实验证明,超过人脑处理能力限制的偏好排序是不稳定的。由于人脑处理信息能力的限制,消费者只能对有限的数种商品进行排序。这也是许多行为经济学研究所发现但并未合理解释的现象背后的原因。米勒法则在行为经济学上还应有更大的发展和应用。

Magic Number 7: Behavioral Economics Analysis of Miller's Rule

Miller(1956) put forward that human brains could only process information up to 7±2 chunks,which was called Miller’s rule.Although the actual magic number implied by the rule is still in dispute in academics,it is widely recognized that human brains have capacity limits in immediate memory and information processing.According to Miller’s rule,people will face a constraint in number of items to process,which may exert significant influence on consumers’ ordering of consuming goods bundles.This paper,based on a simple two-staged experiment,proves that preference ordering beyond the processing capacity of human brains is unstable.Miller’s rule and our experiment indicate that consumers’ preferences on goods bundles are usually incomplete.Due to processing capacity limits of human brains,consumers could only report stable preference ordering.This is also the reason for many found yet unexplained economic phenomenon.Miller’s rule should have greater development and applications in behavioral economics.