The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

by Dan Ariely

The results were depressing. As we had discovered in our first experiment, people who were annoyed by the phone call were much less likely to return the extra cash than those whose conversations were uninterrupted. More surprisingly, we found that the tendency to seek revenge did not depend on whether Daniel (the agent) or I (the principal) suffered. This reminded us of Tom Farmer and Shane Atchison. In their case too they were annoyed mostly with Mike, the night clerk (an agent), but their PowerPoint presentation was aimed mostly at the Doubletree Club hotel (the principal). It seems that at the moment we feel the desire for revenge, we don’t care whom we punish—we only want to see someone pay, regardless of whether they are the agent or the principal. Given the number of agent-principal dualities in the marketplace and the popularity of outsourcing (which further increases these dualities), we thought this was indeed a worrisome result.