Ryan's review
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dan Ariely
Ryan's review
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
Ryan's review
rating:
bookshelves:
business-economics,
non-fiction,
psychology
As a social psychologist, I have been trained to scoff at all "behavioral economists" because they often claim to have recently discovered that individuals do not always behave "rationally". Furthermore, they seem to brilliantly deduce that the only way to accurately predict how humans actually behave is to test behavior/decision making empirically. Of course, social psychologists have been doing this for over half a century without much public fanfare or guest spots on "MSNBC" or "CNN" every time people want to know how consumers make decisions.
With this clear bias of mine in mind, this isn't a bad book. Ariely at least gives full credit to Tversky and Kahneman's influence on his work (both psychologists), and he describes his experiments in clear, easy-to-understand language for the non-scientist reader. The big "however" with this book is Ariely's tendency to extrapolate beyond the results of his studies with recommendations con...more
With this clear bias of mine in mind, this isn't a bad book. Ariely at least gives full credit to Tversky and Kahneman's influence on his work (both psychologists), and he describes his experiments in clear, easy-to-understand language for the non-scientist reader. The big "however" with this book is Ariely's tendency to extrapolate beyond the results of his studies with recommendations con...more
