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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Ariely
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £8.00
You Save: £8.99 (53%)
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Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 1030
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0007256523
EAN: 9780007256525
ASIN: 0007256523
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
 Didn't see that one coming... November 11, 2008
R. Hill (United Kingdom)
I wanted this book to be so much better than it actually is. I've been waiting for this book (or at least *a* book about the irrational foibles of human behaviour) to be written for years now, and having finally been given one, it's turned out to be a bit disappointing.
Oh, don't get me wrong, it's an interesting book and well worth the read. It contains plenty of inventive experiments into human behaviour, described thorough and entertaining ways, and if that's what you're after, look no further. If you want a series of case studies into demonstrating the irrationality of human behaviour, this is exactly the book you're looking for.
If you're not presently of the belief that human beings are locked in a tragic cycle of making the same errors of judgment time and time again, you might walk away from this book feeling enlightened. If you're already quite comfortable with this notion, this book is just more ammunition for a gun you already own.
It also suffers a little for its written style. It feels more like a collection of blog entries than a cohesive book, and while an effort has been made to group the content into sensibly-categorised chapters, that's exactly what they feel like: collections of content rather than running themes. In spite of this, if you like the subject matter it will probably maintain your interest.
I may be being a little harsh on it, since most of my complaints amount to "this isn't the book I wanted it to be", but I can't help but feel that the book itself isn't the book it wants to be either.
Predictably Anecdotal October 5, 2008
Mr. O. Buxton (Highgate, UK)
Blame Malcolm Gladwell - but after Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking social psychologists of the type he featured in that book have been coming out of the woodwork to publish in the pop science market in alarming numbers figuring, reasonably, enough that there's a bit of money to be made on the side. I'm guessing royalties from articles in the International Journal of Psychology would pale in comparison.
One of the latest is Dan Ariely, whose unique selling point is a horrific accident he sustained as a student Israel which left him with burns to 70% of his body. His book does what it says on the tin, by way of explaining a number of social experiments that he and his colleagues have run in the last few years, loosely themed around the observation that we don't always act as sensibly as logic would dictate.
Which is fine - as you would expect, some of the examples are eyebrow raising - but it really shouldn't be news and it certainly doesn't require Dan Ariely to tell us that our liberal western societies aren't as rational as we like to think (incontrovertible proof of that, not offered in Ariel's book, being the politicians we elect and the amount of attention and money we collectively devote to cosmetics, fashion, celebrity and professional sport), especially as deeper epistemological examination reveals the idea of "rationality" is incoherent anyway.
But just as some anecdotes are enlightening, the implications of others are not nearly as plain or convincing as Ariel thinks they are, and some of his experiments struck me as being particularly glib, superficial and susceptible to plenty of alternative interpretations.
And what Ariel's book lacks is any further theoretical drive: OK, we re predisposed to behave in silly or odious ways - but what's your point? In what underlying way are our irrational proclivities linked? What conclusions can we draw; what can we learn; what strategies can we adopt to counteract the harmful effects of our fecklessness?
Ariely implies, but doesn't say, that some sort of regulation is required to save us. But given that it was our irrational proclivities by which we arrived at these politicians (and the political institutions through which they organise themselves) I'm not sure he leaves us any better off than when we started.
Olly Buxton
But is rational necessarily good? September 30, 2008
Secret Spi (Germany)
Dan Ariely has written an interesting and thought-provoking book on the behaviour of human beings in the field of money and commerce. There are some fascinating insights here that we already "knew" from our own behaviour but had maybe put it down to a personal oddity. Now we know, from the experiments of Dan and his colleagues, that we are not alone in our irrationality!
I like the style with which the book is written: it is extrememly readable and Professor Ariely's humanity and humour come through in large doses, which is refreshing for an academic/business book. The chapters that I found particularly interesting and pertinent were those on social and market norms (why is a gift for your neighbour helping with your house move OK but paying him is not?) and how our dishonesty increases the more steps removed we are from real money (some huge implications for our increasingly cashless society).
But...I started getting annoyed with Dan with his very liberal acceptance that as humans, we cannot be expected to have much self-control. When he starts suggesting that cars for teenagers have built-in warning devices that phone Mum or start playing classical music when the poor dears start getting out of control and breaking the speed limit, I wanted to scream "No! Teenagers shouldn't be allowed to cruise around in cars burning up the world's natural resources until their parents judge them to be adult and responsible enough!" Ditto the comments about a credit card with various limits built in.
Finally, I detected a rather odd implication throughout the whole book that rationality was somehow "good" or "desirable" and that irrationality was somehow associated with "poor decisions or wrong choices". I'm not sure that that is always the case. Some of the best decisons are made on the basis of intuition.
 Reality is absolutely relative. September 16, 2008
Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas)
At first glance, the title of Dan Ariely's book seems to be an oxymoron. (It certainly catches one's attention.) Can irrational thought and/or behavior be predicted? Perhaps if it is repetitive? (The judgment and behavior of at least some people can be repetitive and thus predictable.) So I began to read his book with curiosity but also, yes, with some skepticism. Here are a few of my reactions. First, he learned a number of "lessons" from what he calls "experiments" in his life, each of which struck him as being counterintuitive. For example, everything is relative...even when "it shouldn't be"...or in fact isn't. That is, our mind can "play tricks" on us and thus we tend to see what we expect to see, hear what we expect to hear, etc. Images and sounds are relative to their context or frame-of-reference within which we place it. Or consider the frequently expressed observation, "one man's trash is another man's treasure" or one or more of self-serving juxtapositions such as "He's a tightwad whereas I'm frugal...she's narrow-minded whereas I'm a specialist...They're stubborn whereas I stick to my convictions." Ariely's other lessons also, directly or indirectly, involve illusions and delusions of one kind or another. They explain why we can't make ourselves do what we want to do, why we overvalue what we have and especially what we purchase, and "why a 50-cent aspirin can do what a penny aspirin can't."
As I worked my way through the first few chapters, I was reminded of a joke I heard years ago. This fellow arrived just in time to tee off for another round of golf with three friends. They played every Saturday morning. "Hey, I've got great news! Just bought the best hearing aids that money can buy. They cost $8,000 each but they're worth every penny. It's a whole new life for me. Never been happier." "You spent $16,000 on two hearing aids? That seems expensive." "Nah, like I said, worth every penny." "What kind is it?".... The fellow glanced at his watch. "Exactly 7:30."To paraphrase Descartes: It is if I think it is.
Also, Ariely shares what he learned about the differences between conventional economics and behavioral economics. Contrary to "the far-reaching conclusions" that generations of economists have developed "about everything from taxation and health-care policies to the pricing of goods and services," asserts that human beings are far less rational than standard economic theory assumes. "Moreover, these irrational behaviors of ours are neither random nor senseless. They are systematic, and since we repeat them again and again, they are predictable." (Hence this book's title.) Ariely makes a convincing, at times humorous but nonetheless rational argument to support modification of standard economics, "to move it away from naive psychology (which often fails the tests of reason, introspection, and most important - empirical scrutiny)." He collaborated with a number of colleagues when conducting various experiments that enabled them to "slow human behavior to a frame-by-frame narration of events, isolate individual forces, and examine those forces carefully and in detail." The results of the experiments illustrate general principles of human behavior (e.g. the decision-making process) within and beyond the workplace.
Finally, I admire the extent to which Ariely succeeds in explaining the fundamentals of economics and social science for a reader such as I who knows essentially nothing about either. (Oh sure, I have some scraps of information and countless opinions but....) For example, in Chapter 9, Ariely describes an experiment that he conducted with two MIT professors to answer questions that include "How to explain violence? Why does it happen? Is it an outcome of history, or race, or politics - or is there something fundamentally irrational in us that encourages conflict, that causes us to look at the same event and, depending on our point of view, see it in totally different terms...We came up with a simple test - one in which we would not use religion, politics, or even sports as the indicator. We would use glasses of beer."(I do have extensive prior experience with beer!) The details of this experiment are best revealed within the narrative but I will indicate that the material in this chapter provides a number of revelations that help to explain "the hidden forces that shape our decisions."
Congratulations to Dan Ariely on a brilliant achievement!
Absolutely fascinating. July 30, 2008
J. Scott (Co. Down United Kingdom)
I was given this book to review several months ago, and it's been sitting on my 'to do' shelf ever since. I kept procrastinating because... well, it seemed like it would be a very dull read. I didn't even know what 'Behavioral Economics' was, and it didn't exactly sound like a page-turner.
In fact, I've discovered that I couldn't have been more wrong. It *is* a page-turner. I usually picked it up intending to read just one chapter, then didn't set it down until I'd read three or four.
The chapters are quite short and 'bite-sized'.
The book explores a lot of the totally illogical things that we do from day to day. Things that hurt our bank balance, or our health, or our relationship with family or work colleagues. It's full of interesting experiments that have been carried out to back up the thesis, and gives occasional pointers on how get ourselves out of our self-imposed traps.
Not that the 'traps' are always self-imposed. When you read the book, you'll find a trip to the supermarket will be a whole new experience, and you'll never feel quite the same about those 'buy one, get one free' offers. You'll have a much better awareness of how salesmen, advertisers, and probably governments manage to manipulate us so easily.
Definitely recommended for anyone interested in why we humans do the crazy things we do.
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