Predictably Irrational : : the Hidden Forces That Shape our Decisions

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"Originally published in 2008, in a different format, by HarperCollins Publishers."--Title page verso.
"1st rev. and expanded ed"--Title page verso.
How an injury led me to irrationality and to the research described here -- Truth about relativity: why everything is relative, even when it shouldn't be -- Fallacy of supply and demand: why the price of pearls, and everything else, is up in the air -- Cost of zero cost: why we often pay too much when we pay nothing -- Cost of social norms: why we are happy to do things, but not when we are paid to do them --Influence of arousal: why hot is much hotter than we realize -- Problem of procrastination and self-control: why we can't make ourselves do what we want to do -- High price of ownership: why we overvalue what we have -- Keeping doors open: why options distract us from our main objective -- Effect of expectations: why the mind gets what it expects -- Power of price: why a 50-cent aspirin can do what a penny aspirin can't -- Context of our character, part 1: why we are dishonest, and what we can do about it -- Context of our character, part 2: why dealing with cash makes us more honest -- Beer and free lunches: what is behavioral economics, and where are the free lunches? -- Bonus material added for the revised and expanded edition: reflections and anecdotes about some of the chapters -- Thoughts about the subprime mortgage crisis and its consequences.
This evaluation of the sources of illogical decisions explores the reasons why irrational thought often overcomes level-headed practices, offering insight into the structural patterns that cause people to make the same mistakes repeatedly. In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, the author, a MIT behavioral economist, refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience withgroundbreaking research, he explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, he discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They are systematic and predictable, making us predictably irrational. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, he explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. This book offers ways to change the way we interact with the world one small decision at a time.

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