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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Ariely
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $12.95
You Save: $13.00 (50%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  81 reviews
Sales Rank: 63
Format: Roughcut
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 006135323X
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.83
EAN: 9780061353239
ASIN: 006135323X
Publication Date: February 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
- Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?
- Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught?
- Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?
- Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full?
- And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar?
When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're in control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we? In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world—one small decision at a time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 76 more reviews...
Excellent tho rather Predicatbly Unpredictable May 1, 2008
Basically the entire concept can be expressed in two words: Human Element.
But those of you who prefer a little more verbosity with a tiny smithering of grandiosity will enjoy Predictably Irrational.
My only regret is that I purchased the print edition rather than the Kindle, now when I wish to quote from it; I need to bring the book with me.
 The brain on money April 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Would you take a pencil from work? How about a quarter from the petty cash box? Could you tell your favorite beer from ordinary swill? Why is "buy one, get one free" more effective than "half off"? Why does the pension-fund raider go free while the ATM thief goes to jail?
Ariely, professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT, explores these and other snappy, intriguing questions, and designs clever experiments to test his ideas on people - mostly students at MIT and Berkeley. From the placebo effect to procrastination, from branding to the role of expectations, Ariely peeks behind the rationalizations of common behavior and explores the intersections and divides between our social and economic worlds.
Many of his results are indeed predictable, (students with deadlines got better grades than those who set their own), but some are startling. In one experiment students were asked to unscramble sentences. One group received neutral sentences; the other worked on sentences about money. Afterwards both groups were given a puzzle and told they could ask for help. Those who had worked on the money-oriented sentences worked almost twice as long as their counterparts before asking for help. They were also less willing to help others and more likely to sit by themselves.
Similarly, students were asked to write the last two digits of their social security numbers next to a list of products, then decide if they would pay that price for each item, i.e., $23 for a cordless keyboard, $23 for a box of Belgian chocolates. Next they were to indicate what their maximum bid for the item would be. The students with higher social security digits bid correspondingly more.
Ariely also shows us that logic isn't necessarily more sensible. Though it seems logical to give yourself as much time and knowledge as possible before writing three term papers, those who chose the semester-long option performed predictably less well than those with specific deadlines.
Amusing and personable, Ariely argues that we could save better, procrastinate less, be healthier, get more from employees and bosses and outwit advertising if we understood our irrational minds. And his thought-provoking experiments may help us do all that, at least more often.
Potentially of greater interest, however, are the implicit questions surrounding public policy and regulation. A book worth talking about.
 What a Crock! April 29, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Again, a fleeting glimpse into the obvious!
We all know that no economic model, let alone crude and simplistic models based on skimpy hypotheses, is a reliable measure or predictor of behavior. This book's theses are rehashes of some economic notions that have already been fleshed out, rehashed, and exhausted in the simplest psych 101 readings. This just shows that exaggerated credentials, slick packaging, a few skilfully placed "reviews", and make-it-easy short chapter slicing and dicing will always sell a few books these days.
Worse is the utter implausibility of the experiments - stuff that just didn't happen because people wouldn't do it (any more than soldiers in the Union Army sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic as they marched ("Be jubilant, my feet"????) or Soviet troops rushed to their deaths shouting,"For Stalin"! Come on....
I can see the author and some of his colleagues from some Academia D-list giggling over cheap, pretentious red wine about pulling the wool over the eyes of their lumpen-readers for a few extra bucks. Don't let those bucks be yours!
 Empirically suspect April 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
While entertaining to read about the various "experiments" run on college students, the book does not provide much empirical evidence for the proposition of humans being predictably irrational. In addition, Ariely goes from these experiments to broad social conclusions - everything from the need for more government intervention (and who can possibly think government can be more rational than the market over time?) to how we effect better healthcare. The leaps are huge and ones that are hard to make with Ariely. Don't let this book convince you that market forces don't work. While it is quite well agreed that in the short run human behavior can be quite irrational, in the long run the market heads in the right direction and is quite rational. I recommend anything written by Thomas Sowell..his Basic Economics is an excellent primer. Sowell does it in plain english without graphs or charts and the evidence he provides is well researched.
We really are weird April 28, 2008
This book is an incredibly absorbing and easy read--a strange thing to say about a book that purports to be about economics. But the things that the author shares about his (sometimes very strange) experiments, will be enlightening to both economists and non-economists alike.
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