Interesting article on our propensity to take risk by day of week.
.. the outcome of a decision can depend on the day of the week on which it is taken. That turns out to have important consequences. For example, in the UK, every general election since 1935 has been held on a Thursday – the most risk-averse day. The Scottish Independence and Brexit referendums were also held on Thursdays. The core message of the Brexit campaign – "Take back control" – was a direct appeal to risk aversion, and the opinion poll data show that support for Brexit was strongest on Thursdays. Our analyses show that the outcomes might have been different had they been held on Fridays.
This got me thinking about scheduling high-risk events ahead of time. Some you can control the timing of others happen to you. In the event you control when the event itself will occur, I wonder if you would make the decision differently depending on which day of the week you made it. Say A is planning on suing B - the issues leading up to this situation may have been brewing for years and months but one day A decides to pull the trigger despite the associated risks of initiating litigation. The question is would they be more likely to do so a Monday or a Friday. To extend that idea further, if for some random reason they could get this process started only Tue-Thu would they would choose not to start it at all.
The idea of day of week being a influencing factor in our decision making makes me think about religious observances that fall on certain days of the week. If you are meant to fast all day and stay in on a certain day of the week, it is likely you will not make high-stake decisions on that day. The following day might be the day of week when you will be risk-averse and make more conservative choices. If society in its entirety could be edged more towards risk-aversion then status quo would likely prevail.
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