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| Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Ariely
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £8.49
You Save: £8.50 (50%)
New (30) from £8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 1072
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0007256523
EAN: 9780007256525
ASIN: 0007256523
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Predictably Predictable March 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
One of many... March 19, 2008
Alongside the Freakonomics tome and The Undercover Economist, Dan Ariely attempts to uncover and unravel that peculiarly irrational heart of human decision making : humans themselves. We are notoriously emotional, tricky beats, who often fail to understand ourselves let alone anyone else, so it's a hard slog to the untrained mind. Thankfully, Airley manages to get to the heart of the matter and explains the risk/reward carrot/stick behavioural models, as well as times when our emotions may control us and we don't even know. Taking the direct route to an explanation where many would follow the obscure answer, there is little wasted space in this econocomical and succint text that manages to reveal light on the great unknown that is the human mind. There is still a lot to learn.
 not as illuminating as it thinks it is March 19, 2008
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
As a general introduction for someone who has never thought about exactly why we make the choices we make - especially with regard to purchasing goods and services, the role of advertising, and how they put the 'con' into consumer - this book works ok.
But for anyone with just a little savvy, or who doesn't believe that advertising equals truth, the news that people are willing to pay more at Starbucks for the same coffee they can get cheaper at many other cafes is hardly the revelation the author thinks it to be.
Or the fact that people often lie about themselves when filling out forms or questionnaires, or have the view that taking a pen home from the office is not stealing, but taking a tenner from the petty cash box is...
If the above is news to you, you may find the book interesting, but I found nothing surprising in the book, and would recommend that those of a similar (realistic/cynical?) nature should look elsewhere for a more in-depth look at the subject.
Yes, I am predictably irrational too... March 19, 2008
This is a fascinating book which shows that we humans are not as rational and logical as we like to think. Dan Ariely looks at issues such as why people will feel better when they take an expensive painkiller rather than a cheaper one even if they contain exactly the same ingredients or why people will steal a can of coke from a communal kitchen, but not money. More importantly he shows why these findings have wider implications for society. This is a thought-provoking book and certainly makes you question your own behaviour (yes, I have stolen a pen from work, but I wouldn't steal money from the petty cash tin and now I know why!). My only criticism of this book is that I wish it were a little longer and more indepth. I also wish the author had looked at some more topics (rather like in 'Freakonomics') as I was interested in finding out more.
Good, with caveats March 18, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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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