But “Predictably Irrational” is a far more revolutionary book than its unthreatening manner lets on. He is good-tempered company if he mentions you in this book, you are going to be called “brilliant,” “fantastic” or “delightful” and crystal clear about all he describes. These sorts of rigorous but goofy-sounding experiments lend themselves to a genial, gee-whiz style, with which Ariely moves comfortably from the lab to broad social questions to his own life (why did he buy that Audi instead of a sensible minivan?).
honor system” caused cheating to plummet.) (It turned out that being reminded of any moral code the Ten Commandments, the non-existent “M.I.T. To see how social situations affect honesty, they created tests that made it easy to cheat, then looked at what happened if they reminded people right before the test of a moral rule. (In that state, their answers to questions about sexual tastes, violence and condom use were far less respectable.) To study the power of suggestion, Ariely’s team zapped volunteers with a little painful electricity, then offered fake pain pills costing either 10 cents or $2.50 (all reduced the pain, but the more expensive ones had a far greater effect). To see how arousal alters sexual attitudes, for example, Ariely and his colleagues asked young men to answer a questionnaire then asked them to answer it again, only this time while indulging in Internet pornography on a laptop wrapped in Saran Wrap. Ariely’s trade is behavioral economics, which is the study, by experiments, of what people actually do when they buy, sell, change jobs, marry and make other real-life decisions.
Obviously, this sly and lucid book is not about your grandfather’s dismal science. Ariely calls it “the most accepting, social and caring place I had ever been.” It came to him at Burning Man, the annual anarchist conclave where clothes are optional and money is banned.
Here, Dan Ariely, an economist at M.I.T., tells us that “life with fewer market norms and more social norms would be more satisfying, creative, fulfilling and fun.” By the way, the conference where he had this insight wasn’t sponsored by the Federal Reserve, where he is a researcher. But these days, even Bill Gates says capitalism’s work is “unsatisfactory” for one-third of humanity, and not even Hillary Clinton supports Bill Clinton’s 1990s trade pacts.Īnother sign that times are changing is “Predictably Irrational,” a book that both exemplifies and explains this shift in the cultural winds. For years, the ideology of free markets bestrode the world, bending politics as well as economics to its core assumption: market forces produce the best solution to any problem.
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