Robyn Dawes defines irrationality as adhering to beliefs that are inherently self-contradictory, not just incorrect, self-defeating, or the basis of poor decisions. Such beliefs are unfortunately common. Witness two examples: the belief that child sexual abuse can be diagnosed by observing symptoms typically resulting from such abuse, rather than symptoms that differentiate between abused and non-abused children; and the belief that a physical or personal disaster can be understood by studying it alone in-depth rather than by comparing the situation in which it occurred to similar situations where nothing bad happened. This book first demonstrates how such irrationality results from ignoring obvious comparisons. Such neglect is traced to associational and story-based thinking, while true rational judgment requires comparative thinking. Strong emotion--or even insanity--is one reason for making automatic associations without comparison, but as the author demonstrates, a lot of everyday judgment, unsupported professional claims, and even social policy is based on the same kind of irrationality.
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"A good, enjoyable read." -- Dion Scott-Kakures, Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University
About the Author
Robyn M. Dawes is the author of over 150 articles and four books, the latest being House of Cards, and Rational Choice in an Uncertain World, which won the William James Award from the American Psychological Association. He has degrees from Harvard, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and is now teaching at the Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Potential readers of this book should first of all be careful not to confuse it with the usual debunking books that tell amusing stories about how foolish we are to believe what we believe. This is a different kind of book altogether. There is only a trace of "debunking" here, regarding a few of the authors' pet peeves, such as the overemphasis on self-esteem by many psychologists, the sexual abuse/memory recovery controversies, and the usefulness of clinical experience vs. statistical predictive models. However, those are certainly not discussed sufficiently to get the book for that purpose.
This is also not a book on critical thinking, or one listing all the various ways thinking can go wrong. There are much better books on those subjects as well.
This is specifically a book describing a certain type of yet poorly understood cognitive mechanisms that the Dawes feels is at the root of much of our irrational thinking. He considers the theories that assume out emotion leads us astray, and decides that even within cold thinking processes devoid of strong emotion, there are tendencies toward irrationality. He makes the point for example that most support of Nazi fascism was not motivated by rage so much as cold cognitive processes: a suppression of sympathetic emotion more than the expression of hatred.
Dawes defines irrationality is a very specific way, as self-contradictory thinking processes and conclusions. He then points out that there are a number of easily demonstrated biases in human thinking, even when there is no strong emotions involved.
Dawes does not believe that we understand this very well yet, but his central culprit is our failure to make sufficient comparisons in our thinking. He is quick to point out that this is not usually because there are too many choices to consider; that even when we only have two options, we often fail to consider the second one. Dawes does not really offer much of a unifying explanation for cognitive irrationality biases, though he alludes to some of the theories very briefly.
What he does do is to point out that human thinking is fundamentally irrational by default in some ways, and he believes it can be corrected if we understand and pay attention to the comparisons we make in our thinking.
This book has technically solid explanations, good examples, and useful scientific content. On the other hand, I found it a pretty dull book to read, it felt a little more like it should have been an informal version of a journal article on decision theory and heuristics than a book.
32 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Philosophers, church fathers, and psychoanalysts have long shared the sinking feeling that rationality is more an ideal than a reality. In his new book, Robyn Dawes expertly reviews and critiques several traditional approaches to rationality. His own definition is simple: Judgments and decisions are rational if they avoid outright contradictions. With this definition, Dawes avoids many of the contradictions and circularities that economists run into when they try to equate rationality with the effective pursuit of self-interest.
Dawes argues that lots of contradictions occur because sages and fools alike tend to think associatively instead of comparatively. To use one of Dawes's favorite examples, we may reasonably expect a dyslexic person to make many typos, but it does not follow that a poor speller is a dyslexic. Associative thinking suggests that inferences are symmetrical, whereas comparative thinking does not. Throughout the book, Dawes emphasizes the relationship between irrationality and social (or individual) ills, such as genocide, addictions, false memories and false accusations, and motley superstitions. This is where it gets interesting: Although Dawes defines rationality without reference to its consequences, he makes the empirical case that we are better served by rational than associative reasoning. The argument made by evolutionists and ecologists that associative reasoning also has its benefits, he finds loathsome. The reader is not off the hook. Everyone needs to find an answer to the question of how much effort to invest into rational thought.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Robyn Dawes is a distinguished psychological researcher whose personal contributions to understanding human behavior have been prescient and pathbreaking. This is very lively, informal, and humorous commentary on our society based on rigorous psychological research undertaken by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky,Richard Thaler, and their coworkers over the past few decades. I know other readers found this book tedious, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it has some math in it? At any rate, I treated the book like pleasant light reading.
Dawes claims to hold a very tight definition of rationality, but in fact, he uses the term to describe a host of different behaviors, including holding unfounded beliefs, having weird personal moral values, or just ignoring the evidence. I use a
very narrow definition of rationality in my work (preference consistency is the substance of it), and I generally disapprove of throwing the term "rationality" around ad libidem---academics invoke rationality to justify their prejudices in the same manner clergy invoke God to justify theirs. But Dawes is sloppy in such a disarming way in his usage that it is hard to fault him.
Dawes actually relies on only a couple of well document psychological phenomena (he could have dealt with several more). One is a framing effect, in which if a choice is framed in terms of losses, people choose one way, and if in terms of gains, a very different way. It is actually closely related to loss aversion, which Dawes does not discuss.
A second phenomenon is ignoring base rates. For instance, suppose you learn that a test for HIV is 90% accurate, and you ask people what is the probability they have HIV is they test positive. Most say 90%. However, suppose only one person out of
100 is HIV positive. Take a group of 1000 people. Ten will be HIV positive (on average...) and nine will test positive. But 990 will be HIV negative and 99 of these will test positive. Thus, if you test positive, your chances of being HIV positive are only 9/(99+9)=8.33%.
This is an important phenomenon, but "irrational" is a bit strong here, as elsewhere in the book. We expect experts to know how to do conditional probabilities, but it is no more "irrational" to get this wrong than to fail to solve third order partial differential equations.
I very much liked Dawes' treatment of Sexual Abuse Hysteria. In this chapter, he really does show the aberrant reasoning of the judges and attornies associated with the incredible miscarriages of justice associated with this dark period in American history.
Dawes claims to hold a very tight definition of rationality, but in fact, he uses the term to describe a host of different behaviors, including holding unfounded beliefs, having weird personal moral values, or just ignoring the evidence. I use a
very narrow definition of rationality in my work (preference consistency is the substance of it), and I generally disapprove of throwing the term "rationality" around ad libidem---academics invoke rationality to justify their prejudices in the same manner clergy invoke God to justify theirs. But Dawes is sloppy in such a disarming way in his usage that it is hard to fault him.
Dawes actually relies on only a couple of well document psychological phenomena (he could have dealt with several more). One is a framing effect, in which if a choice is framed in terms of losses, people choose one way, and if in terms of gains, a very different way. It is actually closely related to loss aversion, which Dawes does not discuss.
A second phenomenon is ignoring base rates. For instance, suppose you learn that a test for HIV is 90% accurate, and you ask people what is the probability they have HIV is they test positive. Most say 90%. However, suppose only one person out of
100 is HIV positive. Take a group of 1000 people. Ten will be HIV positive (on average...) and nine will test positive. But 990 will be HIV negative and 99 of these will test positive. Thus, if you test positive, your chances of being HIV positive are only 9/(99+9)=8.33%.
This is an important phenomenon, but "irrational" is a bit strong here, as elsewhere in the book. We expect experts to know how to do conditional probabilities, but it is no more "irrational" to get this wrong than to fail to solve third order partial differential equations.
I very much liked Dawes' treatment of Sexual Abuse Hysteria. In this chapter, he really does show the aberrant reasoning of the judges and attornies associated with the incredible miscarriages of justice associated with this dark period in American history.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Irrational Conclusions Are Often Used to Make a Point
This book is a social scientific study of the tendency towards irrational conclusions to make or interpret a point. Read more
Published on February 28, 2009 by Bonnie Brody
Insightful
This is a thought provoking and insightful book, even if at times it displays a somewhat heavy prose. Read more
Published on October 6, 2008 by S. B. Volchan
Good in places but...
This book covers in some detail some hows and whys of irrational thinking in adults with some excellent examples. Read more
Published on August 11, 2004 by Sea Monster
I didn't give it a '1' because it could have been worse
Everyday Irrationality by Robyn Dawes was not at all what I thought it would be. I chose to purchase this book because I thought it would be an exposé (possibly... Read more
Published on September 20, 2001 by Daniel Graf
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