Book review

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Author: Dan Ariely

This book belongs to that genre of products designed to get on best seller lists… and it did, for many weeks. Do the rational thing and take it out of the public library.

It is an entertaining look at the behaviour of test subjects in controlled decision-making situations. The subjects are often university students; convenient, because the author is an academic working in the area of behavioural economics. The “hidden forces” in the title is a little corny, but it seems to have spurred sales.

I worked in advertising and sales promotion, so I know the author is right to observe that people can be relied upon to make choices that are not necessarily the best ones, given the right set up. He notes the overpowering effect of the word FREE, for example. He notes how perceptions are skewed by expectations and how contrived comparisons will tip peoples’ choices. We forget about thrift if the money we spend is even slightly abstracted, as in, say, a credit card transaction. We make dishonest choices, too, but not rationally… often limiting our cheating when there is no practical reason for doing so.

The author makes sweeping generalizations based on some pretty small “experiments”. The trappings of science are present (control groups, for example) but this is not science in the sense that physics and chemistry are sciences. The book’s certainties struck me as glib, but the subject matter is intriguing enough to make me want to read what other authors have to say about it.