DLD09 live

1. Predictably Irrational

   Tags: dan ariely· dld· dld09  -  0 comments

   

   From Dan Ariely's speaker bio about this topic

   Dan Ariely studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational. His interests include daily behaviors such as buying (or not), saving (or not), ordering food in restaurants, procrastination, dishonesty, and decision making under different emotional states. His experiments are consistently interesting, amusing, and informative, demonstrating the ways we are all predictably irrational.

   His book, Predictably Irrational, was selected as one of the notable books for 2008 by the New-York-Times and as the best business book for 2008 by Amazon, Hudson, and BusinessWeek. He was also named as one of the 10 new gurus for 2008 by Fortune Magazine

   Dan is giving many great examples of which I try to capture some in the notes from his talk:
   "Most people are introduced to the concept of irrationality through marriage"

   Giving examples of illusions trick our minds, like the famous example of how many times the people in the white t-shirts pass the ball to the others. (we don't want to spoil it for you).

   Visual is probably our best system, evolutionary designed to be good - and still we can fail. What about other areas where our systems are not as good as the visual system?

   Consequences of small differences: What happens when you change the sentence "check the box if you want to participate in donating your organs" to "check the box below if you don't want to participate"? People don't care and don't check the box either way - but with the second way you have a much higher percentage of people donating organs.

   The Jam story: what happens if you have six jams or 24 jams?
   People taste 1,5 jams on average but are more excited by a wider variety. Nonetheless: People are more likely to buy when there are just six jams. 30% bought when only six where available, but only 3% when there where 24%. Why? The moment you put too many choices together, you make the selection too complex.

   How adding a charge for coffee changed people choices towards the option "without coffee".

   The secret of the middle option available:Offering a middle choice makes the higher choice more desireable.

   In order to succeed when bar hopping, you should pick somebody who is a slightly more ugly version of you in order to succeed.

   We need to understand why we fail in our irrationality.

   Lessons:
   We have multiple irrational tendencies.
   We have very bad intuition.
   And if you would like to be part of his studies, he will be happy to take you on as a test subject.

   
   

   

   Nicole Simon
   Why humans are so 'Predictably Irrational'

   January 25, 2009
   04:28 PM