The Upside of Irrationality

Endlich habe ich mir die Zeit genommen dieses wunderbare zweite Werk von Dan Ariely zu hören.
Im Gegensatz zu "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty" (Die halbe Wahrheit ist die beste Lüge: Wie wir andere täuschen – und uns selbst am meisten) sind die hier erwähnten Forschungen nicht schon Bestandteil seines ersten Buchs gewesen. Zudem sind die Themen teilweise auch wieder sehr persönlich. Einzig eine Zusammenfassung fehlt dem ganzen noch.

I'm interested in learning about unconscious bias in myself and others, and this book zeroes right in on that with well-presented research and personal anecdotes, highlighting some of the benefits and challenges inherent in the subject. I'm always surprised that while I have a strong curiosity driving me, my mind is surprisingly resistant to actually learning about its biases. It helps a lot if the presentation is very clear, as simple as possible, and memorable. This book does that job well.

Humans are so interesting. Why we make the decisions we do, why we react in ways both predictable and unpredictable, I find it all fascinating. Dan Ariely is a social scientist who had made a living trying to figure us out.

Lots of good takeaways here, from why people think (usually erroneously) that their ideas are best - I'm definitely guilty of this - to seeking revenge (me also) - to adapting to our situations, both good and bad. As I listened to the audio, I kept thinking I need to pull up the ePub and highlight some of these passages for my team at work. So much of it makes sense and can help you in any job where you deal with people, which is almost all of them. By the way, if you have a job where you never have to interact with another human, please call me so I can do the same job.

You should first read [b:Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions|1713426|Predictably Irrational The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions|Dan Ariely|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1255573980s/1713426.jpg|3074803], then read this. You will learn something about how humans make decisions, both yourself and those around you. Very good read. 4 stars.

In this sequel to his great book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely gives further examples of his experiments in behavioral economics, but also delves into how one might be able to use that irrationality to improve ones life.

Ariely through a series of experiments is able to demonstrate that not only do we react in irrational ways, we are also influenced by things that we are unaware of. In one experiment he shows how a bad mood one day can change a person's behavior over the course of weeks.

But since our irrational behavior is in fact predictable (as his previous book showed) we can use some of these influences to attempt to train ourselves to respond the way we wish we would.

Along the way Ariely touches on many things, like the universally negative results of pressure (no one in fact thrives on it) and the reason that people react more strongly to individuals than to large groups of people.

You won't come away from this book suddenly able to achieve everything you wanted in life, but you will have a much better understanding of where you may have gone wrong and why other people are acting the way they are.