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The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
Narrated by Simon Jones
Book Actions
Start Listening- Publisher:
- HarperAudio
- Released:
- Jun 1, 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780062011497
- Format:
- Audiobook
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.
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.
- Publisher:
- HarperAudio
- Released:
- Jun 1, 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780062011497
- Format:
- Audiobook
About the author
Related to The Upside of Irrationality
Reviews
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.