Predictably Irrational

I was in, of all places, Godalming, at the weekend and ended up

browsing in a book store for a few moments. I saw what looked like a

very interesting book,
href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/0007256523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211186399&sr=8-1">Predictably

Irrational. The book looks at the processes behind bad or

irrational decisions. The author is an economist and it seems the aim

of the book is to help us to see the emotional effects that influence

our decisions, and that lead us to poor decision making. This is a

theme that is dear to my heart, as it is closely related to the way

that science policy gets determined, insofar as the facts about

specific scientific domains are often swamped by emotional reactions

to what people think the science is about.

I didn't buy the book yesterday, as I have a very large current

reading list, but not wanting to feel that I was costing myself some

opportunity I actually remembered the name of the book. I was

delighted this morning when I found that the author has a great
href="http://www.predictablyirrational.com/">site about the book

which includes a
href="http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?page_id=17">blog. The

author Dan Ariely also has a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely">wikipedia page.

From the site and the blog there are links to some papers that seem to

form the basis of the book, so now I can get some small chunks to read

to satisfy my curiosity about the subject.

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend