Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Predictably Irrational Author: Dan Ariely Publisher: Harper Collins ASIN: 006135323x

About This Book

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 outlined in his book, "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions," MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with original 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.

• 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?

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.

Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT, where he holds a joint appointment between MIT's Media Laboratory and the Sloan School of Management. He is also a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and a visiting professor at Duke University. Ariely wrote this book while he was a fellow at the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton. His work has been featured in leading scholarly journals and a variety of popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, and Science. Ariely has appeared on CNN and National Public Radio. He divides his time between Durham, North Carolina, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the rest of the world.