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69 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
Don't be put off by the words "business" or "economics"
This is really a popular psychology book about how we behave and how, as the subtitle puts it, hidden forces influence our everyday decisions. So don't be put off by quotes from businessmen and economists in the blurb. I almost was. But I'm glad I wasn't. This is a neat little book with plenty of nuggets of information and insights that you can put to use immediately. You...
Published 21 months ago by possiblejersey
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78 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting, but narrow in scope
The field of behavioural economics is a fascinating one, which has already brought us the wonderful 'Freakonomics'. By comparison to that book this one suffers somewhat, because:
(1) There is an unremitting US-centricity here. All the examples and experiments are about typically US topics, all the conclusions are spelled out in a US context.
(2)...
Published 21 months ago by Ray Blake
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69 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
Don't be put off by the words "business" or "economics", 24 Feb 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This is really a popular psychology book about how we behave and how, as the subtitle puts it, hidden forces influence our everyday decisions. So don't be put off by quotes from businessmen and economists in the blurb. I almost was. But I'm glad I wasn't. This is a neat little book with plenty of nuggets of information and insights that you can put to use immediately. You learn things about yourself and other people that seem so obvious you wonder how you'd never noticed them before and you learn why hunches you've had in the past really are right. Each chapter of this book consists of some simple experiments that are designed to probe a different aspect of our decision-making process e.g. how our expectations affect how we experience things and why too many choices can be unhelpful, to mention just two. The experiments are simple and elegant.
They usually consist of asking two or more differently informed groups of students questions about something. Actually, sometimes the author is a bit vague about the exact experimental conditions, how bias was eliminated from the experiment (particularly with respect to how questions were framed [what language was used] and how the participants were chosen [a few samples were decidedly small]) and how the many variables were isolated and controlled. So in that sense we must take Ariely's word for it. Also, he often vaguely summarises the results of these experiments with words such as "more than" and "most" instead of giving figures. If he were giving a lecture I would have asked him to clarify quite a few points. But all in all I think that this was an interesting book albeit a short one. It is a slim volume and the typeface is quite large. I'm a slow reader and I read it comfortably over two days.
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78 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting, but narrow in scope, 1 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The field of behavioural economics is a fascinating one, which has already brought us the wonderful 'Freakonomics'. By comparison to that book this one suffers somewhat, because:
(1) There is an unremitting US-centricity here. All the examples and experiments are about typically US topics, all the conclusions are spelled out in a US context.
(2) The findings are often used as a launching point for some thoroughly unscientific moralising about how society ought to act differently.
(3) The experiments all seem rather narrow in scope. None is repeated and all seem to run on a rather small scale. It seems that as soon as one experiment throws light on a curious behaviour, it is time to move on to the next. I suspect the writers of 'Freakonomics' might have found more data to explore more fully aspects of the behaviour each time.
I was also annoyed by several chapters containing an appendix which appears right after the chapter, rather than all residing at the end.
On the plus side, Ariely writes engagingly and describes the experiments with a fair amount of humour. I paricularly enjoyed his descriptions of the experiment testing the effect of arousal on judgment.
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
Useful route into behavioural economics, 30 Mar 2008
I bought this having seen Dan Ariely speak at LSE recently. He was an engaging speaker and his research sounded interesting.
Having read the book I was left a bit underwhelmed, because I found that I was already familar with both some of the research and a number of the concepts, and was tempted to give it 3 stars. However on reflection that's probably a bit unfair. This is actually a good book for people interested in learning about the field of behavioural economics. It's nicely written with a chatty style, and some of Ariely's research is very interesting.
Just a few snapshots to give you an idea of what this book covers. He looked at subscription packages for The Economist and found that and obviously bad deal led people to choose an option that was like it but obviously better (because it gave them a way to measure the options). In contrast when there were two options that were different but hard to compare they tended to just go for the cheap option.
In a maths test where subjects were given a cash reward based on the number of problems solved and were given an opportunity to cheat, he found that asking them to recall the Ten Commandments ahead of the test appeared to make them less likely to be dishonest.
And in taste tests people prefer Pepsi to Coke when tasting blind, but prefer Coke to Pepsi when they know in advance when they know what they are going to drink. This suggests that we prime ourselves to enjoy something we expect to enjoy.
If this all sounds 'obvious' to you, to some extent you are right (although there are many examples in this field that are counterintuitive). But people like Ariely make the point that although in a 'common sense' way we know that we are easily influenced and 'irrational', policy is often still made with the assumption in mind that we behave as rational self-maximising economic agents.
One point that can be, and often is, made in return is that although behavioural economics is good at describing seemingly irrational behaviour, it is yet to prove itself as a useful resource for designing better policy (although opt-out, rather than opt-in, approaches to both pension saving and organ donation are arguably influenced by behavioural insights). And in fact Ariely's book is at its weakest when he tries to suggest ways that his research findings might inform policy (I'm not surprised that the bank didn't call him back about his credit card idea!).
So for someone such as me interested in policy the book is enjoyable, but a bit limited in value. However if you are new to this field and interested in finding out more this is a good starting place, and you may well find yourself surprised by some of the findings.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Illuminating, 4 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This book is all about why and how people don't behave like the sensible, rational beings they are supposed to be. It makes an excellent job of showing how conventional economics is plain wrong and how you should expect normally honest people to cheat (just a little) given the right conditions.
It also has a brilliant chapter on social norms - how people mess things up when they mix up market economy and social/friendship types of behaviour. Those 20 pages should be required reading for every male with the slightest autistic tendencies (and certainly made me vow to be more careful in future in social situations involving favours).
The whole book backs up its assertions with entertaining descriptions of behavioural experiments. Some are enlightening, eg what makes people cheat and just how strong the placebo effect can be. Others are hilarious, eg how we can't predict how our own behaviour will change when angry or otherwise aroused.
All in all, an entertaining and educational read. Ideal for adult males who think they're more rational than they really are (ie most). It is very US-focused but I didn't mind that - the parallels with the UK in terms of health care waste and corporate wrongdoing are close enough and I'm sure the behaviour of individuals varies very little across the water.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Apparantly we have a tendancy to exaggerate our business expenses (oops!), 12 Mar 2008
This is a fascinating book about why we make the decisions we do
(and why we think we're in control of our decision making but in
reality there are far more forces at work that we realise).
The book is broken down into chapters including topics such as why
we feel it's ok to take stationary etc from work, why we pay more
for more expensive pain killers even thought the ingredients of the
cheaper version are the same and why we would pay far less for
something that we really want than we would sell it for if we won it
for free.
The author, Dan Ariely, a Professor of Behavioural Economics, has
carried out many experiments (mainly by the students at his college
it seemed) which I found really interesting and with some unexpected
results. The results, however, were often a little vague but I
suspect that this isn't meant to be an Economics text book and
therefore the average joe reading this won't be interested in graphs
and decimal points all the way through, rather preferring to
understand his findings in a non-economist-friendly way.
I was also pleased to see that our very own Amazon gets a mention.
Apparently, a lot of us will buy and extra book/DVD etc that we
didn't plan on (or even necessarily want) purely to get the free
shipping (guilty as charged!). This chapter was on why we will take
just about anything if it's free and in turn lead me to think about
why I had this book in the first place - the price on the inside
cover was £16.99 and is something that, although I may have been
mildly curious about, is certainly not something I would have ever
considered buying at that price (or even less if I'm completely
honest). As it happens, it was on Amazon's latest Vine list for
free, so did I take it? Absobloominlutely!
I really enjoyed this book, it takes no time at all to read and
can be dipped in and out of, but more importantly it relates well to
our own lives and there were plenty of "I do that" moments.
I would recommend this book for anyone interested in human
behaviour. It's certainly accessible and requires no prior knowledge.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting And Not Too Serious, 2 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Dan Ariely really seems to have sussed things out: his rational thinking when most of us would get over excited about a deal is refreshing, and interesting. I like the way he dissects things for you, yet leaves you time to think about the deals as well. He lets you make your mind up about what you'd do, then he usually runs an experiment - then you see how you faired with other people.
Great read for anyone into marketing, psychology, human sociology and behaviours in the world. Also a good read for those of you who can be sucked in by marketing, targeted adverts and other forms of selling.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
You'll thank me later..., 16 Jul 2009
In this book the amazing communication skills of Dan Ariely help us understand how, in our everyday life, we behave "Predictably Irrational", just as Lorenz's goose or Pavlov's dog. If you think the words Psychology, Economics, Reserch and Fun don't make any sense together, buy the book. You'll thank me later...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Predictably Predictable, 20 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Although this book is an enjoyable read, I didn't find it overly enlightening on a psychological level. The experiments couldn't be taken too seriously and the overall tone of the book was light hearted. On the whole I found it to be just too American. Having read the reviews on Amazon.com, I understand that the author is a celebrity in the States. The chapter on with Saran (I presume this is cling film)-wrapped laptops was particularly amusing when read out loud to my boyfriend. The stars are awarded for entertainment rather than educational value.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Good, with caveats, 18 Mar 2008
As others have mentioned, this book does suffer in comparison somewhat to Dubner and Levitt's wonderful Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. For me at least the foremost reason is that this is one of those books that would benefit from having a European edition. Much of the cultural context and the examples are highly US-centric. Indeed, I suspect some of the behavioural experiments performed might elicit different results in Europe, but this doesn't seem to have pervaded this work. and this is odd, considering the author is not a native of the US [Note: any European behavioural economists or research students might care to reflect on this for a moment and wonder if there is any research mileage here].
Many of the experiments are interesting in a limited way, but manage to have rather localised results extrapolated to reach some questionable conclusions. And he does sometimes have a tendency to be rather unsubtle and repetitious in hammering home a point, as if he's writing for a particularly dim first-year undergraduate: the first chapter is a case in point.
If all this sounds like a litany of whinges, please don't let it put you off, because this is actually a very interesting book. Ariely generally writes in an engaging, crisp and sometimes witty style. His explanations are concise and mostly work pretty well in a non-academic context.
While you may not agree with everything you read here (in fact, some of it I vehemently disagreed with) you might at least begin to ask yourself questions that you may not have stopped to consider. You may even start to notice some of the things Ariely talks about a little more closely. That can't be a bad thing.
[I wanted to give this 3 and a half stars, but have rounded up to four because 3 sounds rather harsher than it deserves]
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Overly Simplistic, 12 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I came to this book having previously read, and enjoyed, Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics applies econmoic theory to social and political situations and arrives at unconventional, but compelling, conclusions.
I had hoped for more of the same from Predictably Irrational, but was disappointed. To be fair, it's very different in its approach to applying similar theories to aspects of our lives. Each chapter analyses a particular form of our behviour and attempts to illustrate our irrationality via an experiment. I found the experiments to be very simplistic and they all too conveniently supported the author's theories. Each time I tried to apply this logic to my own behaviour, but mostly concluded that I simply don't act in the overly simplified way that was presented. I'm afraid I didn't learn very much at all.
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