Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Ever wondered why you do the things you do, make the decisions you do, or why someone else behaves a certain way? Ever wanted to get inside the minds of your potential customers, partners, investors and other people important to your company and know their hidden fears and thoughts so you know how to overcome them?

If you’re a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Blink‘, you should check out ‘Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions‘ by Dan Ariely, a MIT professor and researcher who looks at behavioral science and sociology in terms of how it affects every part of our lives.

Knowing why people do what they do and how we’re all influenced by different mediums has always interested me, I think it’s part of what drew me to marketing and PR. Seeing test results of landing pages, headlines, etc. and seeing the big difference just one or two simple tweaks can make is fascinating to me and makes me want to dig deeper into WHY. During college I took an entire course in persuation theory, and it was a great class, but didn’t offer much in the way of practical, real-life examples that I could relate to.

Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics that people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart, why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money, why people trying to lose weight can’t pass by the dessert cart, and other “irrational” behavior.

According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should instead be based on our systematic irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior opens opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice.

I’m about 70% of the way through the book, and I’m already forming ideas for how to apply what I’m learning to my business and my clients’.