Predictably
Irrational
DAN ARIELY SPENT 3 YEARS IN HOSPITAL AFTER AN ACCIDENT
Dan Ariely didn’t start out manhood like the rest of us. His 19th and 20th birthdays were spent in a bath full of disinfectant solution – whilst nurses ripped bandages off his raw flesh. Ariely didn’t have any skin left after a large magnesium flare exploded next to him, leaving most of his body covered in third‐degree burns. The next 3 years were spent dislocated from society. His experiences gave him a clairvoyance into human nature. Tom Aedy OS (MJP) His first observations concentrated on why his nurses chose
to remove his bandages (which stuck to the flesh more than they
would to normal skin) with a short, fast tug. Ariely believed that
removing them slowly, giving extended pain of a lesser
magnitude, would be less excruciating over time. Turns out the
nurses were so disturbed by the screams made by the patients
during the procedure that they chose to get it over with as soon as
possible. Good for them. Bad for Ariely.
Breaking free from his hospitalised
nightmare, Ariely became fascinated with
oddities observed in human behaviour and a career in experimental behavioural
psychology and economics has blossomed.
Predictably Irrational skips (rather
randomly at times) from oddity to oddity,
experiment to experiment, but Ariely
ensures that every theory he devises has
been scrupulously verified by real-life
findings – and the reader is left trusting his
authority absolutely. As long as you can
bear the constant repetitions and
reaffirmations (yes I do remember what you
wrote 20 pages ago) then the book becomes
a real eye-opener about how far we fail.
Have you ever wondered why we buy things we don’t
actually need? Why people buy Ferraris? Why you nearly always
get things that are offered for free? These, and many more
questions, are tackled in his book using that elusive and growing
branch of Economics called behavioural economics. To see how
arousal alters sexual attitudes, for example, Ariely and his
colleagues asked young men to answer a questionnaire (regarding
the possibility of engaging in distasteful sexual conquests) both
before and after giving them a laptop wrapped in Saran Wray (for
ETONOMICS
protection) with pornography on it. Turns out the chance of
‘getting sexually excited by contact with an animal’ increases by
167%! Very disturbing…..
Whilst some discoveries are merely amusing, some results do
pose some very challenging questions about our assumptions of
how things are. Perhaps his most interesting finding was that of
the power of placebos. We all know that placebos are frequently
given to people who are depressed (just snap out of it!) but Ariely
believes the links between price and placebos
are far more wide reaching. In one
experiment he zaps volunteers with a little
electricity and then offers them fake pain
pills – either costing 10 cents or $2.50 and
found that whilst both reduced the pain that
the volunteers felt, the second pill reduced
the pain markedly more! The power of the
mind… He goes on to question whether
surgery is pointless (not all surgery, but some)
and the same effect would be gained through
giving a patient a few incisions, telling him/
her the operation lasted five hours and then
watching them walk out of the door. Surgery
carries risks – and if it is pointless, then are
patients contracting MRSA and the like for little or no reason?
Ariely’s book is yet to cause a mass upheaval in the world of
economics. But it should. Economics makes the wrong
assumption that all economic agents are rational and can value
what they want correctly. But this book is full of examples where
this is simply not the case. In some cases we are rational, but if we
see a sign saying ‘FREE!’ then we become mindless apes,
grabbing something we won’t even use. If you want to make the
right decisions in life, read this book and put everything in
context. Dan says so.
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