Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
by:
Ori Brafman (author)
Rom Brafman (author)
A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think.Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone...
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A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think.Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect” (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us). Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780385530606 (0385530609)
ASIN: 385530609
Publish date: June 2nd 2009
Publisher: Crown Business
Pages no: 224
Edition language: English
For all those that have read Freakanomics!Picks up on the latest theories in behavioural economics and shows through anecdotes and experiments how people can be swayed (hence the title) to pick or choose in certain ways.Blows years of economic theories out the window that people are 'rational'. They...
A quick read, intriguing and enjoyable. The insight into human behavior, both rational and irrational, is priceless. The authors do a great job of keeping the text tightly focused and moving, succinctly imparting a lot of information. It's a great start to the subject, more of a jumping off point...
Sway is worth the read even if only for the chapter titled Compensation and Cocaine in which the exclusive properties of the brain’s altruistic center and self-interest center are examined. It turns out that a person’s charitable motivations cannot co-exist with monetary motivations. Sway examines a...
http://pro-libertate.net/20100507/125-read-sway-irresistible-pull-irrational-behavior
Interesting, but a little lighter weight than I was hoping for. I think 2 other books I've read that deal only indirectly with the "irresistible pull of irrational behavior" do a better job explaining how the thoughts that govern our actions can go wrong--Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Li...