Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Top positive review

irrationally predictable...?

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2023

This is a really fun, really interesting book.

I like to think of myself as a rational being, who makes important decisions based on my superior critical thinking skills. But let’s be honest I am still persuaded by flashy commercials and neat packaging. I am influenced every day and I never notice it.

This shines a perfect light on your irrational decisions. The author shows us time and time again how the smartest students in the world make dumb decisions.

Now one critique that I saw from others: all of the authors studies are artificial creations and not based on real life. That’s true. Rarely do I walk around my neighborhood and am offered free chocolate from a professor. That is a bit weird. But I think the author is showing us proof of concept, an invitation to seek more information.

This book has been out for a while and it is still a very interesting book.

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Mr4

Predictably Predictable

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023

While Kahneman recognized the flaw of macroeconomic models due to subjective irrationality, Ariely takes it to the next step and falls squarely into Hayek’s “Fatal Conceit” by presuming to know how to channel this irrationality for the social good (as defined by him).

His experiments are parlor tricks and his conclusions are more subjective and irrational than they are scientific. He concludes what he wants to conclude.

Ariely also serves as an example of Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” in presuming that man is perfectible if only we had a benevolent dictator to show them the way.

Predictable socialist claptrap, but very beneficial in that it exposes the thinking of those who would wish to control us.

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From the United States

irrationally predictable...?

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2023

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2023

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Enjoyable with fun examples

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Charles A.

Personal Irrational!

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2010

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"Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Ariely Ariely (PI), was an interesting read, and deserves to be looked at by economist, psychologist, marketer, or just people looking to improve their selves alike. It follows the trend, set by Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, in discussion of esoteric economic concepts, but without the academese that tends to keep casual readers away. I found myself personally engrossed while reading this novel due to the parallels of irrational behavior I discovered I also exhibited and will be actively correcting. The following three I believe have sentimental value to me and I feel are genuinely worth discussing.

Zero cost irrationality as described by PI is the concept that reviews the large bias humans show towards "free." I put free in quotations as I am using the term loosely in this context as often the decision chosen is not without cost, and in relative terms, it is often not the option that held the most value per unit of the exchanging intermediary item. In fact, just a few hours before writing this brief review, I purchased three Publix cloth shopping bags that I had no intention of purchasing beforehand, but because they were buy three get one free. I can say in earnest, without that free offer, I would have completely shrugged off the Publix bag, to purchase at another time. A potential solution to this problem, derived from a specific example he mentions within the chapter, is to mentally give the "free" item a price, even one as low as one penny. This, surprisingly, nullifies the zero cost irrationality for most individuals, allowing for proper cost-benefit analysis of the additional item or offer.

Procrastination, or the giving up of long-term goals for immediate gratification, this desire for immediate satisfaction permeates particularly strongly throughout American culture. The effect of this national procrastination can be seen by abhorrently low national saving rate, or more implicitly or healthcare system that is more reactive than proactive. Though I personally am not a pure procrastinator, in fact many would consider me an extrovert, I believe that there quite a bit I still put off that I do so exactly because I fail to properly evaluate the opportunity cost of the long term benefit of said action. For example, I did a quick back of an envelope calculation of me putting of my savings to next year, rather than not starting when I begun work two years ago. This three wait has cost me over half a million dollars (Assumptions: Roth IRA, with locked six percent APR, maturing in fifty years). I have begun taking Ariely's advice, and setting hard deadlines for many things, such as this particular book review which I gave myself exactly the day after completing the book to complete, no exceptions and no excuses.

The final personal irrationality I've found plaguing my decision making has been that of `keeping doors open,' or not being able to stand the idea of closing our alternative options. My irrational in my context, has to do with maybe not a plethora of options, as emphasized within the book, but rather when I am down to two options that have to deal with something within the social sphere. Case in point, I would fret over the decision of whether I should continue to chase after a girl or letting her go, or going to a party where I would probably feel uncomfortable or not, though these examples may seem simple to an someone else, I struggled with these decisions constantly. Often than not, I found myself unable to take the choice that errs on the side of negative (deciding to stay home, or leave the girl alone) as I felt doing so eliminates a multitude of options without producing any new ones of benefit. I am curious to whether how much confidence has to do with the exact experiment presented within the book. I speculate if participants were required to self select as confident, or perhaps anchored to think of confidence, if such decisions become easier. I wonder this, since many my such decision-making gridlocks underlie a lack of self confidence, perhaps those with more of it at the time of the test may change results. In sum, Ariely's solution, as I interpret it, the cure for procrastination is really premised by self-confidence, where one sets long term goals and bravely commits to them.

The book discussed around 14 irrationalities in total across 13 chapters, each holding a slight new scope of human cognizance to gain. The three above mentioned irrationalities after a deep introspective look, I felt held the most personal utility. I genuinely I have a new lens to the world. I genuinely believe that holds the potential to enrich the perspective of most readers as well, no matter their relative amount of academic background on the subject.

22 people found this helpful

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The Mystery of Human Behavior

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2023

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Dan Ariely once again brilliantly lays out the intricacies of human behavior in his Master Class on decision making.

2 people found this helpful

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Mr4

Predictably Predictable

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023

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2 people found this helpful

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Sue Brooks

check out controversy of author

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2023

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I gave it 5 stars in hopes people will research the author’s history before they purchase. Supposedly he manipulates data, a lot.

8 people found this helpful

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Minutemen

Brilliantly Irrational!

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2013

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I have not written any product reviews on Amazon, but I was forced into writing one because of my sincere admiration and new-found respect for Prof. Dan Ariely. I was introduced to the science of Behavioral Economics and the irrational decisions people make in their lives. The author, through his experiments, has an uncanny knack of explaining all the profound concepts in a simple and entertaining manner. The contents in this book will quite literally open your eyes and make you wonder how people are living in this so-called idealistic world of rational decision making. Some of the key ideas presented in this book are:

-> How humans perceive value - "not in absolute terms, but one with respect to another," and this is how companies and marketers deceive people with "seemingly attractive" offers that you cannot resist.
-> Market forces of supply and demand only apply to rational people - in the real world, companies exploit people's irrationality and influence prices and demand.
-> The power of FREE - People are, in essence, losing some other resource in trying to procure FREE items.
-> The wonderful distinction of market and social norms, and why and how they cannot coexist. He also explains how companies can motivate their employees using social benefits, which are cheaper and stronger than financial incentives.
-> As long as money is not involved, we are caring social animals.
-> Why people exhibit different behaviors when they are "normal" (cold state) and when they are "aroused" (hot state). Learning to bridge the gap between the two extreme states is very important and will help you avoid making errors or bad decisions that you will forever regret.
-> The high price of ownership reveals three irrational quirks in human behavior - we are deeply attached to what we have; we often focus on what we may lose (also called Loss Aversion); we assume other people (or buyers of our goods) to also value the goods in the same manner as we do.
-> People's expectations can cloud their thinking, and they use this as a marketing strategy to influence their friends' tastes and preferences.
-> Price is so powerful that it can drive the Placebo Effect - the more the price, the more the utility you derive from the product. This phenomenon was explained with Aspirin - why a 50 cent Aspirin can do what a penny Aspirin can't.
-> Trust is an important public resource and a necessary lubricant of the economy. A few bad players in the market can completely erode it.
-> Why even the most morally upright person can be susceptible to making small crimes that hardly matter. However, a contemplation of moral behavior or a religious code of law before doing any action can greatly reduce the likelihood of people committing these petty crimes.
-> The idea of FREE LUNCHES in behavior economics; the science of economics should be modified to account for how people actually behave instead of how they should behave in society.

These are just some of the important principles explained in the book through experiments and startling revelations. It is easy to read and highly entertaining. However, there is one minor flaw in this book - the concepts and results described are all based on experiments performed on American college students or the western society, which may not be applicable to the more conservative societies in the world.

BOTTOM LINE - Predictably Irrational is a wonderful book with new insights into irrational behavior in people. But for the one criticism, I believe this can change the way people think about economics, and can result in newer norms that account for our actual and not ideal behavior.

PS: For people interested in reading more about behavior and cognitive sciences, I have the following book suggestions:
1. "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business" by Charles Duhigg.
2. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahnem.
3. "The Upside of Irrationality" by Dan Ariely.
4. "The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail -- but Some Don't" by Nate Silver

17 people found this helpful

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Allan M. Lees

Good for the Anecdotes

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2017

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Among the various books available that cover the topic of human behavior, Predictably Irrational is among the top ten (interested readers should also read Sway by Rom Brafman). It's not quite an economics book (for a much better analysis of the many failings of neoclassical economics, read Debunking Economics by Keen) and it's not quite a behavioral psychology book (read Sway) so it falls somewhere in the middle - and therein lies its main weakness.

There are some very interesting anecdotes (for example, do you know why we think black pearls are valuable when originally no one wanted to buy them at any price?) and these are where most of the book's value lies.

The principal weakness comes from Ariely's conclusions based on the work he's carried out. He acknowledges that we humans are "irrational" compared to the straw man of the "rational optimizer" beloved of neoclassical economic theory, but while some of his examples are interesting he fails to see the entire picture. Thus whereas Keen shows that the neoclassical model is computationally impossible, Ariely merely shows that we have different decision-making processes in two distinct contexts: interpersonal and financial. This is valid, but Ariely then goes on to show that he hasn't really explored the interpersonal context with any degree of rigor.

A couple of examples will illustrate what I mean. In the first example Ariely talks about how companies strive to create a "social exchange" in the workplace because people generally work harder and more diligently in social exchange settings than in compensation-based settings. We can think of how we might keep on struggling to get a friend's piano up the stairs of a narrow apartment building long after we'd have given up if we were simply being paid $10 per hour by a stranger to perform the same task. So Ariely notes that companies try to exploit our social side in order to get more work out of us (he doesn't look at the ethics of this attempt, or even at its many infeasibilities). Then he suggests that in order to reinforce the social dynamic and avoid corrupting it with the financial dynamic (because it's not possible to combine the two) companies should not give bonuses but instead should send employees off on a paid-for vacation. The problem, of course, is that most employees don't want to be placed in a parent-child relationship. Most employees think of themselves as independent adults. Saying "here's a vacation we've arranged for you" violates an employee's independence. Worse still it assumes the employee's plans for their free time are irrelevant (the cost of leaving one's home, family, and friends for the duration of the enforced vacation are apparently zero where the company is concerned...). Obviously this recommendation would be disastrous under real-world conditions and one wonders how Ariely failed to think through his proposal.

A second example of this failure to think things through comes with Ariely's analysis of cap-and-trade. Rightly he points out that when you set a price on something (in this case pollution) then people may elect to pay more in order to get more. Just as we might only take a single candy from a tray being passed around the group but might buy ten if the candies are being sold, so too might companies pollute less if pollution were a "social good" rather than a priced good. With cap-and-trade companies might simply elect to pay more in order to feel free to pollute more. So Ariely proposes making pollution a "social good." But again a moment's thought shows this to be absurd. Not only do we have far too many examples of companies being quite happy to pollute when it's a cost-free exercise, Ariely's own book shows that executives will ignore social factors when their focus in on financial rewards. As executives are almost exclusively motivated by fat financial rewards, the notion that they would take social norms into account when deciding whether or not (or how much) to pollute is like saying that investment bankers would put the needs of their clients and the financial system in general ahead of their own desire for the $100 million bonus they get from pushing CDOs onto unsuspecting dupes.

So in the end the book is worth reading for its anecdotal value but not for Ariely's own conclusions or policy suggestions. He's not-quite an economist and not-quite a behavioral psychologist and ultimately that means he's not-quite useful as a guide to policy formulation on either the micro or the macro scales.

322 people found this helpful

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Interesting Stuff, but runs a little long

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2012

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This was a fun book to read. It has been a while since I took any economics courses, and I forgot how much of economic theory is based on the assumption that humans are rational beings, always acting in their best interests. Dan Ariely does a marvelous job of shooting holes through that assumption.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* The book is really an overview of behavioral economics- the study of how supposedly rational people make decisions. Ariely recounts numerous experiments in which people are given a challenge and react in ways which would seem to be exactly opposite of their self-interest. As an example, if you allow people the chance to buy $1 chocolate bars for 10 cents, they will purchase quite a few. But if you offer then 90 cent chocolates for free, they will only take one or two. If experiments like this interest you, you will enjoy the book.

* In each case, Ariely describes a simple experiment, and provides a theory as to what he thinks happened. I have no idea how many of his theories are considered valid, or would stand up to peer review. But for a quick read to just amuse yourself with human nature, the explanations suffice.

* Ariely picks a nice assortment of topics-everything from placebos to "irrational" pricing and honestly and ethics. The experiments are clever and "fun", although I doubt they would stand up to serious scientific scrutiny. Still, they were fun to read, and I will probably try some of them on my friends.

=== The Not So Good Stuff ===

* While Ariely writes well, he is not the most engaging author you will read. The text comes across a little dry, and by the final chapters, I was ready for the book to end.

* While the experiments, or at least their explanations were no doubt simplified for the book, in some cases they open more questions than they answer. Ariely offers one explanation and theory for the observed results, but makes no attempts to analyze deeper, or provide alternative explanations.

* Without seeing more information, it is hard to tell if the experiments and their conclusions are statistically valid. In some cases it seems that they might not be, although given Ariely's background, it would seem he would know enough to assure the experiments validity.

* Finally, there is no real theme or common thread through the work. Rather it is more like a series of short lab reports. The result is that the book can become tedious, and that it is tough to remember some of the results, as all the stories blur together.

===Summary===

While there were some problems, I did enjoy the book, and found the material fascinating. Some of the experiments product results that were quite unexpected, and with a little thinking you can use some of this information into whatever your business or trade you operate in.

I'd recommend the book, with the caveat that the book has some flaws. Still, the positives outweigh the negatives.

3 people found this helpful

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Harish Nair

Its all in the mind

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2015

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Alas, I read “Thinking, Fast and Slow (TFS)” before I read this book. So, a lot of stuff in this seemed to be a repetition.

So, how is this different from TFS. While both the books are on the subject of Behavioral Economics, hower, Dan has kept the topics brief and discussions to the point, so that the interest is sustained. While he would have conducted innumerable number of experiments in course of the research, he has only referred to a select few in this book. And whatever his criteria for selection was, it was pretty good, as it kept the interest of the readers on. I would prefer it over TFS

A brief overview of the interesting concepts in this book, which can of good use in product and pricing decisions are:
Relativity – to make a line look smaller (or a product affordable), draw a bigger line next to it (or a more expensive model). You need not really put an effort to sell the expensive model, but it gives a relative idea. The important thing is that the products should be comparable, as human mind cannot function with incomparables.

Anchoring – Daniel had labored on this a lot in his book TFS. For a consumer to make a purchase, an appropriate anchor is important, which could be even the MRP. So, low MRP does not necessarily help to sell. The interesting revelation was that “ our first decisions resonate over a long sequence of decisions”!! So, get the customer first. Of course, one can de-anchor (don’t know if there is a word like that), for which uncomparable variants need to be introduced (Starbucks case ) and for which its own MRP becomes the anchor

Reaction to price changes : It lasts only as long as the memory of the old price persists, demand soon normalizes

Zero cost : Free is a powerful tool, although expensive to the consumer ( Woody Allens quote that “The most expensive sex is free sex” is so apt, although that was quoted more from the social norms context). So, make the consumers buy something for nothing. Add freebies for upselling, nothing much new about it. But using FREE! to drive social policies is interesting.

Social norms : Very powerful, but cuts both ways. Once a social norm it established, bringing in market norm will destroy it forever (the example of late pickup being charged at day care is a perfect example). Keep sending small gifts to the customer , they will yield good returns.

Influence of arousal : Frankly, not of much use in commercial, but was quite astounded to read and the experiment was an eye opener.

Price of ownership or endowment effect: Giving an option of refund if not satisfied is a very powerful hook in durable segment, as the endowment effect generally inhibits any urge to return.
Keeping doors open : This concept is quite detailed out in the book Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Too many options only destroy value

Effect of expectation and power of price : When we believe something beforehand that something will be good, it generally will be good an vice versa. So, manage your customer expectation. A high price only enhances the expectation

The continuum message is that human beings are mere pawns in a game whose forces they largely fail to comprehend. And that is where behavioral economics will be a strong feed into marketing – making sure that consumers make the right choice!!

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