Predictably Irrational

Every so often, I start yearning to learn more about human psychology in various shapes and forms, and so here we are with this book. Having read several books on behavioral economics, it’s no wonder you’d find discussions on topics you’ve seen quite often so it might seem repetitive. But the thing about studying/reading human behavior is that it’s so relatable, that you almost always find behavioral traits that you could change or start doing for the better, so what’s not to like?

The basic idea behind the book and many others in the same domain remains the same, we think of humans as rational beings and expect they would behave like so. But that’s not the case, and the fact that we base our policies–corporate, governments, and healthcare to name a few–makes this issue more pressing. Various flaws in our decision-making are explained with examples, experiments, and studies, using topics such as herding, anchoring, arbitrary coherence, etc. It allows the reader to find answers to questions such as “Why’s the buyer quoting so little for this item so valuable to me?”, “what should I order in this restaurant while being out with friends?” or “Whether to buy this new product at launch or not?”. These are questions we deal with in our daily lives, the author explains the rationale behind the dilemma we land ourselves into, in the first place. And it’s not just on a personal level that our irrationality affects us, it has far-reaching, global implications. The ones running the office and making policy for our welfare, are humans after all, and they are as much prone to being irrational as the average Joe is. The book also discusses moral and ethical issues in the later chapters that throw light on how we can be dishonest to a certain degree without feeling bad about it, and how we can amend such a behavior.

The intent of this book, imo, isn’t to provide you with practical action items so that you can step away from this irrationality and act rationally, no, but it’s about making us aware. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to folks who are interested in knowing more about human behavior.