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 enlarge | Author: Dan Ariely
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $14.75
You Save: $11.20 (43%)
New (53) from $14.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  125 reviews
Sales Rank: 122
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
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| Customer Reviews:
Very interesting July 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nutshell review - This is a great read. A thoroughly interesting, thought provoking and enjoyable look into the world of behavioural economics, or why we do what we do even when it makes no apparent sense!
 Occasional irrational behaviour makes us human July 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely has written a brilliant book that makes behavioural economics as palatable as some of his food and beverage stories.
There is not a person on this earth who has not been surprised sometimes about the dumb choices he/she has made, particularly during stores' sales. Ariely salves the wounded part of the brain responsible for these out-of-character decisions and explains that we all make bad decisions, sometimes.
As a school administrator, duty of care demands that someone stays behind with the child who has not been picked up by an errant parent. We discussed ways of addressing the problem, including fines. Ariely (p. 76) points out that relationships are often defined as either social exchanges or market exchanges, and in the case that he described how a day care centre introduced fines for tardy parents. This meant that the parents shifted from a sense of social exchange guilt to a market exchange monetary cost. When parents worked out the amount of the fine, they then made a decision about meeting the pickup time. He warned that "once a social norm is trumped by a market norm- it will rarely return". A great warning for us.
A second timely warning he issued educators relates to performance-based salaries. The danger is that the majority of teachers, who are driven by the moral notion of doing "good" for students, will be moved from social norms to market norms. Taylorist managerialist decisions are problematic in teaching.
Basically, the book is a good read. It is entertaining, insightful and educative. A 5/5 from me.
My Favorite Book July 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is by far my favorite book hands down. There are some bad reviews on here saying that Ariely's experiments are inaccurate, but regardless, it was still very entertaining to read. I definitely recommend this book!
Irrationality laid bare June 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very readable and after reading it is common sense but what a complicted world we live in. And, we made it so. Thank you Prof Ariely.
Practical application for a sales guy... June 27, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is recommended reading for anyone that is in sales (and aren't we all in some manner). This reviewer sells enterprise SaaS applications/outsourcing to large companies and this book is instantly applicable in my career.
Chapter 1 is worth the price of the book itself! Relativity is key...how many of us non-academics that have to present business cases or influence people for a living have seen the "analysis paralysis" invade our propspective decision making committees? How many times have you assumed your audience will take the information you are presenting and act on it rationally...this book has helped this reviewer to see that it is simply not the case. Futhermore, the author helps with framing decision scenarios...think of it as a blueprint to work from.
It's also refreshing to read a non-academic book with ideas on human behavior that are:
- written by someone with very high credibility
- based on evidence
- not found in the "sales help" section of my local bookstore (thank you Amazon recommendations) where the premise of decision making is flawed from the outset.
I don't get some of the criticism about left leaning ideas in this book...it's certainly not a theme of his to promote bigger government. Rather, to the author's credit, the one comment I do recall on health care pricing is a hypothesis that he can support with some evidence...even if you don't agree with him it's an interesting thought experiment.
There's so much more to take away from this book that can be applicable to one's life...that's not an exaggeration as Chapter 8 (Keeping Doors Open) was profound...I enjoyed this book from beginning to end.
One last comment...the chapters on dishonesty are fascinating!
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