Experimental Studies
Psychologists and experimental economists have studied the decision behavior of actual people in secretary problems. In large part, this work has shown that people tend to stop searching too soon. This may be explained, at least in part, by the cost of evaluating candidates. Extrapolating to real world settings, this might suggest that people do not search enough whenever they are faced with problems where the decision alternatives are encountered sequentially. For example, when trying to decide at which gas station to stop for gas, people might not search enough before stopping. If true, then they would tend to pay more for gas than they might had they searched longer. The same may be true when people search online for airline tickets. Experimental research on problems such as the secretary problem is sometimes referred to as behavioral operations research.
Read more about this topic: Secretary Problem
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