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The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
Narrated by Simon Jones
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"Dan Ariely is a genius at understanding human behavior: no economist does a better job of uncovering and explaining the hidden reasons for the weird ways we act." - James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds
Behavioral economist and New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely returns to offer a much-needed take on the irrational decisions that influence our dating lives, our workplace experiences, and our temptation to cheat in any and all areas. Fans of Freakonomics, Survival of the Sickest, and Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and The Tipping Point will find many thought-provoking insights in The Upside of Irrationality.
Book Actions
Start ListeningBook Information
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
Narrated by Simon Jones
Description
"Dan Ariely is a genius at understanding human behavior: no economist does a better job of uncovering and explaining the hidden reasons for the weird ways we act." - James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds
Behavioral economist and New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely returns to offer a much-needed take on the irrational decisions that influence our dating lives, our workplace experiences, and our temptation to cheat in any and all areas. Fans of Freakonomics, Survival of the Sickest, and Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and The Tipping Point will find many thought-provoking insights in The Upside of Irrationality.
About the author
Reviews
It you`ve ever thought you were a rational being, think again, or why is it important to know behavioural economics and what it can teach us.
One of the best and most entertaining collection of insights woven together with an inspiring amd hopeful narrative. Lots of brilliant inisghts, will have to listen again. The narrator delivers the humour of the text perfectly.
I found this book to be very informative. I'd recommend it to a friend.
An audiobook, I believe, needs to be reviewed, one for the narration and the other for the content. This book excels in both his account.
The narrator, Simon Jones, does a brilliant job in bringing life to an excellent book. The way Simon narrates make one feel as if he was the one who has written it. The tonality change, the pause, the voice are all top notch. I highly recommend listening to this book especially if you are a fan of Human Behaviour and Social Psychology.
A must read for those who are keen to understand human rationality and irrationality. The book destroys the myth of paying big bonuses, our ability to make decisions, how employers destroy the morale of employees and more.
The book has 11 chapters with each chapter covering a specific topic on Irrationality. Depending on the period of life you are reading this book, you are likely to fall in love with certain chapters. Pick this book after 6 months and you will fall in love with chapters you may have forgot the first time you read. Pick it after and year and you will still learn from it.
It's not to say that the book has tome of advices. No it hasn't. What it has is verified nature of human behaviour and what makes us who we are. Dan is not judgemental about human nature and explains the need for us to take actions, that for another person, seems stupid or irrational. The explanations makes us understand why we are the way we are.
The book is covered with plethora of experiments the author conducts with the support of his team. His last experiement on how humans make decisions, based on emotions, is an eye opener. The basic part of the experiement is predictable but what's surprising is the second part of the same experiement. It informs us as how we are prone to emotional experiences than we think we are.
With so much of insight, it's no surprise that organisations, politicians, institutions and likewise haven't implemented any of these insights. Why? Because they aren't as rational as they thought they are.
The narrator, Simon Jones, does a brilliant job in bringing life to an excellent book. The way Simon narrates make one feel as if he was the one who has written it. The tonality change, the pause, the voice are all top notch. I highly recommend listening to this book especially if you are a fan of Human Behaviour and Social Psychology.
A must read for those who are keen to understand human rationality and irrationality. The book destroys the myth of paying big bonuses, our ability to make decisions, how employers destroy the morale of employees and more.
The book has 11 chapters with each chapter covering a specific topic on Irrationality. Depending on the period of life you are reading this book, you are likely to fall in love with certain chapters. Pick this book after 6 months and you will fall in love with chapters you may have forgot the first time you read. Pick it after and year and you will still learn from it.
It's not to say that the book has tome of advices. No it hasn't. What it has is verified nature of human behaviour and what makes us who we are. Dan is not judgemental about human nature and explains the need for us to take actions, that for another person, seems stupid or irrational. The explanations makes us understand why we are the way we are.
The book is covered with plethora of experiments the author conducts with the support of his team. His last experiement on how humans make decisions, based on emotions, is an eye opener. The basic part of the experiement is predictable but what's surprising is the second part of the same experiement. It informs us as how we are prone to emotional experiences than we think we are.
With so much of insight, it's no surprise that organisations, politicians, institutions and likewise haven't implemented any of these insights. Why? Because they aren't as rational as they thought they are.
Amazing lessons about the humain mind and the way it works, after reading the book you will stop trusting habitual and usuals concepts without empirical validations
I enjoyed this book so much I listened to it twice. Dan Ariely is obviously skilled at research and academic writing, but this book is extremely aproachable. I liked how he performed formal research processes on everyday topics that are relevent and timely. This is not a self help book but you can't help but walk away with a different perspective about your own thoughts and behaviors and those of other people.
I enjoyed his casual, witty, and personal writing style. He is a gifted storyteller turning a potential research case study into a thoughtful reflection on why we do the crazy things we do.
Now, I intend on reading all of Ariely's books.
I enjoyed his casual, witty, and personal writing style. He is a gifted storyteller turning a potential research case study into a thoughtful reflection on why we do the crazy things we do.
Now, I intend on reading all of Ariely's books.
Lots of helpful materials found in this book. Very nice
I really enjoy Ariely's work - when isn't it fun to make fun of economists? - but I do have some problems with psychology experiments generally. Particularly ones that don't take any culture effects into account. (I'm sorry, but you just can't generalize from women clicking on a website to how women feel about dating men generally.)
Interesting. Challenges conventional notions about correlation of pay bonuses to performances; and whether revenge is worthwhile to the person avenging wrongs.
A great book, just as good as the author's previous book.
This is an interesting read about how we make decisions
I'm almost always more impressed by the creativity of the experiments invented by researchers than I am by the conclusion, and this book is no exception: the conclusions are fairly mainstream - we are much more irrational in our decision-making than we like to think we are. The value of the book comes from how researchers were able to validate that in a variety of ways and under a myriad of circumstances.Ariely's use of humour and his honesty about his own decisions and how his past informed them give the book a personal appeal which makes it easy to read and sometimes down-right fun.This book will probably not change my own decision-making process, but it will make me a bit more aware of the influences around me and how my state of mind is a key player in my decision-making process. An informative and entertaining read.
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic
Standard economic theory assumes that people are rational, utility-maximizing creatures, and behavioral economics repeatedly disproves this notion through various, often humorous, experiments. Ariely is a behavioral economist who has conducted many such experiments over the years. His thinking about research is greatly influenced by a horrific accident he experienced as a youth that left him badly burned. This book aims to put a positive spin on irrationality, arguing that it's what makes us human and gives us the capacity to love others. Ariely also hopes to point out some practical applications of his experiments' conclusions.
A few points:
Don't pay your workers bonuses that are too high. This creates too much pressure that distracts; the effect is worse if it's a loss-aversion experiment.
Clutch players don't perform/shoot any better at "crunch time," they just take more shots.
People prefer to work for a reward rather than have it handed to them. Studies show that people do not by-and-large just put in the minimum effort in order to get the maximum reward. I wrote a personal observation of this on an assembly line years ago. They put in effort and desire to achieve goals, they value their work. But people want to know their work serves a higher purpose. If your boss gives you an assignment and you work very hard on it, and even get recognition for it, if the work gets shelved or the project is canceled, it crushes motivation. This isn't rational-- you know you did a good job, you got paid for it, you got praised by your boss. But those rewards aren't enough. The next time you're given such a task, it will affect your motivation and the quality of your work.
Connecting even the lowliest worker's tasks to the overall goals of the company will increase productivity. I remember this being best exemplified by SRC Holdings in Springfield, MO which includes all its employees in its monthly financial meetings-- all employees (from the janitor to the CEO) see how their work affects the bottom line, the success of the company, and therefore their paychecks. This is considered "best practice" in management and is encouraged by current ISO standards.
Playing "hard to get" in love really does work, when we have to struggle to accomplish or build something we take greater satisfaction than if it was easy. When the task is a big struggle and we fail to complete it, we feel worse than if the task had been easy and we failed.
The IKEA effect. IKEA may sell cheap furniture, but the assembly process it requires causes us to value it more-- we created something. We become attached to and take greater pride in our own creations, which leads to overvaluation of them. My wife and I recently decided to purchase a used house rather than build a new one, even though the new one would have been nicer and was within our price range and had more positive upside. We made this choice, in part, because I remembered how attached my family was to a house we built in my childhood, where my parents designed it and included input from all of us; it was tailor-made. Among the hardest things we ever did was leave that home, part of me still misses it. We don't intend to live in our current location for very long, so we felt that investing in the creation of a new home would have rooted our hearts more than we wanted. It also would have been harder for us to put our clunky, used furniture into a shiny new house.
People who have experienced a great deal of pain develop higher pain tolerance. Our bodies, minds, and attitudes adjust to our surroundings. Studies have found that people who moved from the cold Midwest to sunny California may have been happier temporarily, but over time reverted to the previous baseline of happiness-- and vice-versa for those who moved to the Midwest from California.
Much of the book deals with Ariely's fascination with assortive mating and the "inefficient market" that is the U.S. dating market. He hypothesizes that those who have obvious shortcomings-- like horrible burns-- may compensate by seeking a less-attractive mate who is, say, funnier or smarter than average. Studies find that men tend to be more "optimistic" and "aim higher" in dating activity than women. They seem to be less aware, or less influenced by, their shortcomings.
Emotions affect our decisions long after the emotions fade. If you decide on a particular course of action because you were influenced by an emotion you felt at the time--positive or negative--you will likely continue on that course of action (even if irrational or inefficient) even though you got over the emotion you were feeling. People have a strong "status quo bias," which makes them loathe to change and we often fall for the "sunk cost fallacy" of becoming attached to things just because they're there.
In the end, Ariely praises the biblical Gideon for testing everything. That is sort of Ariely's motto.
The book was pretty good. I still would recommend Kahneman's seminal Thinking Fast and Slow (my review here) before reading this book, but I would add Ariely's book to the "behavioral economics" reading list. 3 stars out of 5.
Standard economic theory assumes that people are rational, utility-maximizing creatures, and behavioral economics repeatedly disproves this notion through various, often humorous, experiments. Ariely is a behavioral economist who has conducted many such experiments over the years. His thinking about research is greatly influenced by a horrific accident he experienced as a youth that left him badly burned. This book aims to put a positive spin on irrationality, arguing that it's what makes us human and gives us the capacity to love others. Ariely also hopes to point out some practical applications of his experiments' conclusions.
A few points:
Don't pay your workers bonuses that are too high. This creates too much pressure that distracts; the effect is worse if it's a loss-aversion experiment.
Clutch players don't perform/shoot any better at "crunch time," they just take more shots.
People prefer to work for a reward rather than have it handed to them. Studies show that people do not by-and-large just put in the minimum effort in order to get the maximum reward. I wrote a personal observation of this on an assembly line years ago. They put in effort and desire to achieve goals, they value their work. But people want to know their work serves a higher purpose. If your boss gives you an assignment and you work very hard on it, and even get recognition for it, if the work gets shelved or the project is canceled, it crushes motivation. This isn't rational-- you know you did a good job, you got paid for it, you got praised by your boss. But those rewards aren't enough. The next time you're given such a task, it will affect your motivation and the quality of your work.
Connecting even the lowliest worker's tasks to the overall goals of the company will increase productivity. I remember this being best exemplified by SRC Holdings in Springfield, MO which includes all its employees in its monthly financial meetings-- all employees (from the janitor to the CEO) see how their work affects the bottom line, the success of the company, and therefore their paychecks. This is considered "best practice" in management and is encouraged by current ISO standards.
Playing "hard to get" in love really does work, when we have to struggle to accomplish or build something we take greater satisfaction than if it was easy. When the task is a big struggle and we fail to complete it, we feel worse than if the task had been easy and we failed.
The IKEA effect. IKEA may sell cheap furniture, but the assembly process it requires causes us to value it more-- we created something. We become attached to and take greater pride in our own creations, which leads to overvaluation of them. My wife and I recently decided to purchase a used house rather than build a new one, even though the new one would have been nicer and was within our price range and had more positive upside. We made this choice, in part, because I remembered how attached my family was to a house we built in my childhood, where my parents designed it and included input from all of us; it was tailor-made. Among the hardest things we ever did was leave that home, part of me still misses it. We don't intend to live in our current location for very long, so we felt that investing in the creation of a new home would have rooted our hearts more than we wanted. It also would have been harder for us to put our clunky, used furniture into a shiny new house.
People who have experienced a great deal of pain develop higher pain tolerance. Our bodies, minds, and attitudes adjust to our surroundings. Studies have found that people who moved from the cold Midwest to sunny California may have been happier temporarily, but over time reverted to the previous baseline of happiness-- and vice-versa for those who moved to the Midwest from California.
Much of the book deals with Ariely's fascination with assortive mating and the "inefficient market" that is the U.S. dating market. He hypothesizes that those who have obvious shortcomings-- like horrible burns-- may compensate by seeking a less-attractive mate who is, say, funnier or smarter than average. Studies find that men tend to be more "optimistic" and "aim higher" in dating activity than women. They seem to be less aware, or less influenced by, their shortcomings.
Emotions affect our decisions long after the emotions fade. If you decide on a particular course of action because you were influenced by an emotion you felt at the time--positive or negative--you will likely continue on that course of action (even if irrational or inefficient) even though you got over the emotion you were feeling. People have a strong "status quo bias," which makes them loathe to change and we often fall for the "sunk cost fallacy" of becoming attached to things just because they're there.
In the end, Ariely praises the biblical Gideon for testing everything. That is sort of Ariely's motto.
The book was pretty good. I still would recommend Kahneman's seminal Thinking Fast and Slow (my review here) before reading this book, but I would add Ariely's book to the "behavioral economics" reading list. 3 stars out of 5.
Really uneven. Some very interesting sections - but often needlessly goes into detail to make a simple point. I was more interested in his personal story (burn victim) than this book.
The upside of irrationality (p. 294):
Our ability to find meaning in work
Our ability to fall in love with our creations and ideas
Our willingness to trust/ care about others
Our ability to adapt to new circumstances.
The most useful thing I got from this book: be REALLY careful when making decisions/taking actions in a heightened emotional state. Not only do our decisions affect things immediately, but what we decide to do sets a personal precedent that we tend to blindly follow in the future, having forgotten our previous emotional state and thus the motivation for the original decision.
Our ability to find meaning in work
Our ability to fall in love with our creations and ideas
Our willingness to trust/ care about others
Our ability to adapt to new circumstances.
The most useful thing I got from this book: be REALLY careful when making decisions/taking actions in a heightened emotional state. Not only do our decisions affect things immediately, but what we decide to do sets a personal precedent that we tend to blindly follow in the future, having forgotten our previous emotional state and thus the motivation for the original decision.
Well, the title is misleading, unfortunately. Basically the theme is that we can embrace the fact that we're fallible humans, *but* it's important to understand our fallibilities so we can learn to make better, more rational decisions. Still, a fun easy read with good science, and recommended to all amateurs interested in pop psychology or neuroscience.
What I loved most about this book is the way the author juxtaposed accounts of research studies he'd conducted with his own personal experiences. This had the dual effect of adding credibility to his insights and endearing him to me. I wish I could sit down over a beer and just chat with the author because he seems vastly interesting.
Humans are deeply flawed and our decision-making skills are at times irrational and at times easily influenced by extraneous conditions. Dr. Ariely shares some of his research on human decision-making.
While the author showed lot of evidence that we are irrational, he rarely mentioned what's the upside of our irrationality or how to use it for our benefit. So in a way the title is misleading, which attracted me to pick this book in the first place.
Fascinating!
Another amazing book by Dan Ariely. Very interesting stuff. Highly recommend.
Since long I have wanted to add a gist of review of this book, chapter-wise so that I could look up later.
Part 1 - Work-related Irrationalities
1. Big Bonuses don't work. (Which means CEO high salaries aren't quite logical.) Oh, but this is no way a bad news for your rewards and recognition program. Bonuses and reward should be just right, not too less that people do not care and not too much that enormity of reward at stake scares your people into failure.
2. Even though all of us work for a salary to make living. But we all like to find some meaning in the work. For example, if you are a writer who was paid well to research and complete the book, but if for some reason your book does not see light of the day, it is demotivating even if you were paid well for the job. Dan Ariely's team conducts experiments where they pay people to create Lego blocks. For the people, who saw their 'creation' being demolished right in front of them, they found it difficult to go on with work even though they were being paid. So, we all like to find meaning in our work.
3. Ikea furniture works because we overvalue what we ourselves make. We kind of take pride in our creations even if it be a simple origami. Ikea works its not too complicated and yet it gives your bask in that pride that comes when you create your own thing.
4. How sometimes we pass up great ideas because they weren't ours. We didn't think them. So many times, wise aegis is that make your bosses feel that the idea came from them.
5. Why revenge gives us pleasure? Why we punish when we feel things have been unjust. Creative ways customer seek revenge, for example, a viral video about a hotel's bad service. How sometimes apologies can be powerful.
Part 2 - Home-related irrationalities
1. Human power of adaptation. Adaptation of pain. Or, adaption when your prized possessions no longer bring you happiness. How adaption can work for you.
2. On Dating. Hot or Not site, interesting dating patterns. Perception of beauty.
3. More on online dating sites. How market fails.
4. Empathy and emotion - strange phenomenon where we all set out in hordes to help pay for a single person but when it is a genocide or a tragedy involving hundreds and thousands, our capacity to charity sort of diminishes. The 'Drop-in-the-bucket-effect'.
5. Long-term effect of short-term emotions such as anger, jealousy etc - how our decisions are impacted.
6. Lessons from irrationalities - how we should test everything. In short, everything we do is not as logical as it may seem to us.
Part 1 - Work-related Irrationalities
1. Big Bonuses don't work. (Which means CEO high salaries aren't quite logical.) Oh, but this is no way a bad news for your rewards and recognition program. Bonuses and reward should be just right, not too less that people do not care and not too much that enormity of reward at stake scares your people into failure.
2. Even though all of us work for a salary to make living. But we all like to find some meaning in the work. For example, if you are a writer who was paid well to research and complete the book, but if for some reason your book does not see light of the day, it is demotivating even if you were paid well for the job. Dan Ariely's team conducts experiments where they pay people to create Lego blocks. For the people, who saw their 'creation' being demolished right in front of them, they found it difficult to go on with work even though they were being paid. So, we all like to find meaning in our work.
3. Ikea furniture works because we overvalue what we ourselves make. We kind of take pride in our creations even if it be a simple origami. Ikea works its not too complicated and yet it gives your bask in that pride that comes when you create your own thing.
4. How sometimes we pass up great ideas because they weren't ours. We didn't think them. So many times, wise aegis is that make your bosses feel that the idea came from them.
5. Why revenge gives us pleasure? Why we punish when we feel things have been unjust. Creative ways customer seek revenge, for example, a viral video about a hotel's bad service. How sometimes apologies can be powerful.
Part 2 - Home-related irrationalities
1. Human power of adaptation. Adaptation of pain. Or, adaption when your prized possessions no longer bring you happiness. How adaption can work for you.
2. On Dating. Hot or Not site, interesting dating patterns. Perception of beauty.
3. More on online dating sites. How market fails.
4. Empathy and emotion - strange phenomenon where we all set out in hordes to help pay for a single person but when it is a genocide or a tragedy involving hundreds and thousands, our capacity to charity sort of diminishes. The 'Drop-in-the-bucket-effect'.
5. Long-term effect of short-term emotions such as anger, jealousy etc - how our decisions are impacted.
6. Lessons from irrationalities - how we should test everything. In short, everything we do is not as logical as it may seem to us.
"People will suffer less when they do not disrupt annoying experiences and enjoy pleasurable experiences more when they break them up." A break actually decreases your ability to adapt! This is so helpful.Everyone probably already knows why online romantic matchings are unsatisfying--nobody can be reduced to a checklist of very limited likes/demographics/physical characteristics--but here Ariely suggests how such systems can be improved: the couple have to experience something together, even if it's sharing and talking about a website or game.The IKEA effect--we put so much more investment (affection, attachment) to an object that we have put a bit of effort into constructing. I think that's pretty well known, though, from the creation of cake mixes decades ago. It can be extended to others' ideas in, say the workplace. We place more value in an idea that we have come up with ourselves, so if you really want that thing, let your boss think he came up with the notion.Hedonic adaptation, another useful concept or explanation. I have lived in some very ugly Asian cities or the ugly parts of them. The ugliness may assault you on first sight--how about entering Tokyo from the airport? But we do adjust to it *somewhat*. The harsh edges get rubbed down. Sad thing is, the shock of beauty or comfort or the breezy view from your new apartment get filed down as well. I guess this also applies to how Ariely adapted to the pain and discomfort of his injured hand but there's also the Ikea effect involved: he has invested so much effort and suffering getting the hand to function to the extent it does--reducing the pain through amputation becomes less appealing.
Substance: research on what people really do, and sometimes why they do it, and how this differs from the fictitious "reasonable man" of social science and economics.Style: personal and engaging.Contains much more autobiographical material than his first book, "Predictably Irrational".
I enjoyed Predictably Irrational by this author last year, and kept meaning to get around to this book. Ariely is a behavioural economist who studies how people act in unexpected, irrational ways, contrary to the general economic assumption of rationality. His first book focused on explaining how people were irrational, while this one, based on the title, was apparently supposed to highlight some of the benefits of irrational thought. I actually found the title a bit misleading because there didn't seem to be too much focus on the benefits as compared to the general examples of irrationality, but that wasn't really a problem since the book was still enjoyable. It actually made me wonder whether I might be in the wrong field, which is saying a lot; Ariely's work is just so interesting and relevant.One more significant difference from the first book is that The Upside of Irrationality is more personal; I felt like I got a better sense of who Ariely was, which I appreciated on the whole. There were times when I felt like his judgements went a bit beyond the evidence, but ultimately I decided that that wasn't a fatal flaw. I still enjoyed the book, and found a lot of food for thought there. Particularly noteworthy were the studies about how much people are inclined to favour their own ideas over others (does this explain my RSI problems?) and how emotion influences charitable donations: not only will people give more money to a poor suffering individual than to help an abstract group of people suffering more on the whole, but when they're led to think more rationally (by doing math problems beforehand) they actually just give less overall.Incidentally, I was finally led to pick up this book when I came across another book, More Than Good Intentions, in the store; that one applies ideas in behavioural economics specifically to the problem of reducing world poverty, and is high on my wishlist, but I felt like I should get to this longstanding TBR book on behavioural economics first.
Painless behavioral economics book exploring how we don’t behave like rational actors in the classic economic model—we seek revenge against those who have harmed us even when that is costly. Ariely talks about his history of recovering from extensive burns and experiencing continuing pain, and unfortunately chooses sexist jokes over real science when he talks about pain: in grad school, he did an experiment showing that men would keep their hands in extremely hot water for longer than women would while he was timing them. When he brought these results to his professor, a women, she told him that he hadn’t proven that men had a higher pain threshold, but that men were more foolish, and that if the stakes had been more serious he would have seen different results. He reiterates his conclusion and says, “I learned a lot about women that day.” No, he (should have) learned about the scientific method: the alternative hypothesis that men and women value “being able to keep hand in hot water” differently, perhaps because they differ in their response to being under observation, was another perfectly plausible explanation. More data were required, and he probably knows that, but still couldn’t resist the cheap joke.In another oddity, Ariely has the bizarre idea that it’s unfair to punish a principal for acts of an agent: getting mad at the Gap, for example, because a Gap salesperson treats you badly. Now, it’s not right to take a sweater from the Gap because you’re mad at the salesperson, but the rule that principals are responsible for the acts of agents within the scope of their employment is foundational to the modern economy, and rightly so: if a Ford employee leaves out a key part when putting together my car and my car crashes, my remedy is against Ford, not against the likely impecunious employee. This rule encourages Ford to monitor its employees and to spread the costs of any mistakes. A contrary rule would require a lot more explanation, but Ariely is puzzled by why we’d attribute an agent’s misfeasance to his/her employer, which leads to a weird emphasis in the chapter about how our emotions contaminate logically unrelated transactions—an interesting topic in itself, since when we yell at our kids because our boss was mean we really are aiming in the wrong direction.
Additional interesting experiments by Ariely, his students, and peers that suggest that we behave irrationally in matters of economics and "social economics" (like dating). Sometimes this irrationality has an upside - like when those of us that are not necessarily gorgeous or attractive are still picked by mates that have "re-valued" our attractiveness based on other factors. I expected a bit more discussion regarding the "upside" of irrationality, given the title of the book. Instead it appeared to be more of a continuation of Ariely's previous (and interesting book). Nevertheless, he DOES point out some upsides, and the book is fun to read.
If you liked his last book Predictably Irrational you will like this one. It is engaging and explores a number of irrational behaviors, which you may be aware happen; however after his probing they become much clearer. Clearer to the point you may behave differently when you recognize them. Many examples are taken from his experience dealing with his major burns which makes the book more real. He goes deep into his emotions and thoughts and was interesting by itself.