Predictably Irrational

I really enjoyed this book. I love learning about how people work subconsciously.

Key takeaways:

- People almost never order the most expensive thing on the menu, but they will order the second most expensive. The example provided: Add a new, more expensive option, and your current most expensive option will look more appealing. Revenue increases, even though few people order the new item. As a practical takeaway, I see this with our account packages.
- People like to make comparisons between things that are similar. The example provided: If you are house shopping and look at three houses, two contemporary houses and one colonial, most of the time you will ignore the colonial because you can't easily compare it to the other two. Then when comparing the two contemporary houses, if one has a bad roof you will likely choose the other because it is the better of the two. Can we recreate this with account packages?
- Anchoring is incredibly powerful, even if the number used to anchor you isn't related to what you are purchasing. If we mention how much higher rates were X number of years ago, would that make the current rates seem better?
- If you see a restaurant with four people waiting outside for a table, you are inclined to think it is a good restaurant and may join the line. The next person to walk by sees five people waiting, and is even more inclined to join the line. It is entirely possible that none of the people in line have any idea whether the restaurant is good or not. You can do this to yourself (self-herding). Say you normally make coffee at home, but one day stop at Starbucks because you didn't have time to make coffee at home. Next time you need coffee you are tempted to think, ‘I purchased coffee there last time. I must have found good value.' So you shop there again. Now you can point to two instances where Starbucks was worth your business, and the ‘line' grows.
- Free is a big motivator. If you have a product worth $5, and you offer it to one group for $0.01 and another group for free, you will have significantly more uptake with the free option, even when controlling for the inconvenience of needing to pull out your wallet.
- If we can find a way to help our members save more money, we will benefit from the increased deposits. We have the same goal. If NCU members save 15% when the average is 5%, we will have a significant advantage.
- Honda had many routine service items on their vehicles. Customers had a hard time staying on top of them and bringing them in every few months to service different parts. They switched to a more generic schedule: bring your car in every six months and have it receive many different service checks in that one visit. Somethings were checked well before they needed service, but customers had no problem following the new schedule. Can we do a similar concept with financial checkups? At 21, come in for a lesson on credit and the benefits of long term investing. At 25 come in for a mortgage preapproval, even if you aren't planning to purchase a house yet. At 30 come in for a conversation about RRSPs. At 45 come in for a conversation about retirement planning. At 65 come in for a conversation about retirement income, etc.
- More exotic, detailed explanations changed the way people view items and made them value them higher.
- Going to the movies, if you tell your friend it received great reviews, they will enjoy it more.
- There are two parts to marketing: Attracting new customers and selling to existing customers.
- Our products should have a unique component that we can point to and say, ‘See, this is better than the competition!'

https://bigthink.com/the-present/honesty-pledge-study-fraud-dan-ariely/
The data was fake.

** Dan Ariely, I'm in love with you, okay?**

another sexy sexy book by Prof. Ariely.
The hypothesis is intriguing, the intuition is on point, the methods are bulletproof, the studies are fun, conclusions are insightful and his humour is just a giant cheery on top of this big fat juicy cake. if you're going to write book on research and new up and coming ideas, use this as a model, please. not only does he get you involved in this field of Behavioural Economics, he makes you feel the excitement that he carries for the science and joy of research. lucky people who have him as his prof :')
also, absolutely love the fact that he concludes the book with a short biography of all the collaborators of his study. in the cut throat world of academia, this respect for fellow students and colleagues was just so nice :)
my only complaint (I'm nitpicking here) is that I felt two chapters repetitive from his other books but that's prolly because I read the second book before this.
GO READ THIS! relevant for everyone, no matter what field you're in.

Great book if you're into behavioral economics or just fascination about human failures.

Although none were new, still some were shocking!

Ariely explains, “My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are—how we repeat them again and again—I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them.”

This YouTube playlist provides a decent overview of the main points made in the book.

Read my full review HERE.

Predictably Irrational informs how ignorant we are about our irrational behaviors through stories and experiments. The ingenuity of the experiments, and the mere knowledge that the author himself is the one (of the many) who conducted them made the book much more enjoyable. Definitely the book to read if you want to feel smarter.

This book is useful psychology for the everyday person who just wants to understand why in the world people don't make any sense! It is based on scientific experiments rather than just anecdotes, but is written in a casual, understandable way. I had loads of fun with it, and learned something, too!

A look into what motivates us and how our hidden desires contribute to our behavior.

A look into what motivates us and how our hidden desires contribute to our behavior.

I read the book after watching Prof. Ariely and Prof. Kariv's debate in my college. Very interesting and makes you think about the daily decisions you take.

Very enlightening. Found a few things that advertisers use to convince people to buy the option they want instead of what the customer wants/needs. Hopefully I won't fall for these tactics in the future.
Enjoyed some of the the stories, but felt that there was too much detail into the method of the experiment and not enough on the primary issue or ways to improve yourself.

Full review at http://bookwi.se/predictably-irrational-by-dan-ariely/

Short review: If you want to know why people consistently make the same bad decisions, read this book. Great discussions about how to set up boundaries to help us make better decisions once we understand why we often make bad decisions.

This was a pretty interesting book, interesting enough to finish, but maybe not so much that I read it to the exclusion of all else. Regardless, I learned some cool things about how irrational we all are. Things like the effect of a thing's price on our decision to buy it or determine its effectiveness... the influence of arousal on decision-making (careful there!)... overvaluing possessions... the effect of expectations... and our propensity to cheat when the option is available to us. The author details many little experiments that he and his colleagues used to bolster his conclusions and I was amused at how many of them involved beer in some fashion. Clearly he's a smart man.

I literally just finished this yesterday. It came recommended by a good friend of mine.

It's all about how we are all not only irrational, but predictably so. A good example is seen in his example of the advert for a subscription to the Economist. The web-only subscription is $59, the print-only subscription is $125 and the print AND web subscription is $125. Most of his students picked the print and web subscription. But when the print-only subscription was removed, most students went for the web only. Nobody in either case picked the print-only subscription.

He explains that none of this has anything to do with rationality, but that the print-only subscription is placed deliberately as a decoy.

He looks at why we behave irrationaly when offered anything free, why a cheap asprin doesn't cure a headache quite so well as an expensive one, and so on. It was an enjoyable read, however I did find it to be a little repetitive and over long.

The book is really funny, insightful and made me think a lot about why I do things I do. I didn't agree with most of the recommendations he makes based on the results of his studies, but the studies alone are very really interesting and he leaves plenty of room to draw your own conclusions. I was disappointed by chapter 5 which wasn't science, just sensationalism, and I found embarrassing to read.