Probably Random

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
What an awesome book!
I quite literally couldn’t put this down, it was well written, informative and just a compelling read and accessible to all.  Whether you are a researcher, a marketer or well a person then this book explores why we make mistakes and why we don’t always make the logical decisions. I’m hoping that now I have more knowledge I can look at some of my decisions based on the transaction and not my emotions.

At one stage Dan Ariely suggests we try to do too much and leave open too many doors, whilst this is probably true for a self confessed Polymath, shutting some of those may be particularly difficult.

Having worked as a researcher at Manchester University, this reminded me of a series of projects we did with Anthropologists, Psychologists and Marketing experts combined looking at influencing decision making.  I want to go back now and do some of those again.

My only regret is that I didn’t read this sooner, I’ve had it for a while now but it was packaed away because of our house move… If i’d had it earlier I would have seen how we had ‘taken ownership’ of the house we wanted and how this must have been obvious to the vendor…