The, The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior, By Ori Brafman And Rom Brafman

Each of us is confronted with decisions in our everyday lives that require us to gather and assess information on the different alternatives at hand and then make a decision. Examples of such decisions include the decision to attend college, buy a car or some other item, strike up a friendship with Person A or B, select a particular course, or take a trip to Point X or Y. You may have made an error in such decisions because your information was flawed by one or more of the errors of human inquiry that Babbie describes, or the decision may have been correct but for some of the wrong reasons. Recall and describe a decision you have made that may have been flawed to some extent

Frequently we must make an essential decision which will overturn our whole life, however we are trying to block

This paper will examine Robert C. Solomon's Emotions and Choices article, to best identify what anger is, and to what extent a rational human being is responsible for their anger. Firstly, Solomon's argument must be described. A quick summation of Solomon's argument can be found in the following four points: Emotions are judgements, emotions are chosen, emotions serve a purpose, and emotions are rational.1 To quote Solomon, he explains that “Emotions are not occurrences, and do not happen to us. They ... may be chosen like an action.”2

“The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions—especially the wrong ones—is an unpleasant feeling the Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when ever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.” Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish.” (p.13)

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, is a book that discusses the psychology behind the decisions made in life and gives readers an insight on how the subconscious mind plays a part in the choices humans make. The book has an agenda consisting of three main ideas it wishes to convey to the audience. It’s first task is to attempt to convince the reader that, “ decisions made quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately,” (Gladwell, 14). Gladwell then follows with two more concepts to introduce, including answering the question, “When should we trust of our instincts and when should we be wary of them?” and trying to, “ Convince (the reader) that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled,” (Gladwell, 15). Best put by, “A Different and Better World”, Blink mainly covers, “the

This week’s reading Predictably Irrational was very valuable, and informative. While coming up with so many ways of thinking when it comes to behavior, I had no idea even existed. We talked last week about being rational, but this week and this week’s reading it discussed more about irrational, and predictable behavior. At the end of this summary I hope to have showed and understand the difference when it comes to irrational and predictable theories that can disrupt behavior, and decision making.

The profound author of Predictably Irrational is Dan Ariely. When Ariely was a young eighteen year old Israeli boy, he suffered serious injuries due to an explosion. Tragically, 70% of his body was covered in third degree burns (xiii). Due to this tragic accident, Ariely became accustomed to an unnatural viewpoint in economics. The daily “bath” that the nurses gave Ariely made him experience a great deal of irrational fears that were persistent and life-changing. Once his wounds had healed, Ariely then sought out to grasp a better understanding of how to better treat patients so that they did not have to experience the irrational fears that Ariely overcame. This allowed him to begin his field of research, leading to the creation of this intellectually profound book.

At some point in time, we have all experienced regret. As rational human beings, we often make decisions that cause ripple effects that may change our lives in considerable or insignificant ways. When we make regrettable decisions that have negative outcomes, we often dwell on “what might have been” and wonder about the possible results of having made an alternative choice; we call this process counterfactual thinking (Sanna & Chang, 2006). This paper aims to examine how this type of thinking can affect the ways in which we process causation when confronted with unfavorable outcomes. In order to gauge how counterfactual thinking can be affected, we will focus on the factors of gender and mutability of a situation.

“Cognitive dissonance plays a key role in people’s behavior when choosing between alternatives, because the selection of an alternative is based in the fact it is more desirable” (Alvarado, Ramirez, 2014). Humans are often faced with the challenge of choosing between two alternatives, and are often faced with discomfort or regret afterwards. When faced with this regret, people often try to justify or rationalize the decision they made, wanting to reduce this feeling of dissonance. “No matter how smart they are, people who are in the midst of reducing dissonance are so involved with convincing themselves that they are right that they frequently end up behaving irrationally and maladaptively (Aronson, Wilson, Akert, & Sommers, 2016). People do not like to admit they are

“We think, each of us, that we're much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions because we have good reasons to make them. Even when its the other way around. We believe in the reasons, because we've already made the decision.” -Daniel Kahneman

When we are emotionally attached to something, we tend to make extreme decisions towards or about them. One example of this is our emotional attachments to our body shape and looks. In “How salad makes you Fat,” Alex Hutchinson responds that people who want to lose weight tend to reward themselves after a workout as a way to “balance it out”(Hutchinson). Although, many do believe that if you put your mind to it, you can refrain from the “balancing.” This decision is unquestionably illogical from our point of view but people make that decision unconsciously. They believe that they have worked for the reward. We take this action immediately “when one decision swings too far from self-concept”(Hutchinson). Self-concept is what we are accumulated to in our daily lives. I corroborate with the author’s view in the stance that hard work does push for a reward. The reward although, isn’t usually a good choice. Instead of a fruit smoothie or a sandwich, they tend to choose food items in the genre of candy and sweets. Another way that emotional attachments affect snap decisions is in criminal murder cases. Usually, murder cases are deeply personal and paramount to the convict. This deeply personal relation causes snap decisions to be made that we can not control. Our emotions get the best of our sub conscious mind and make the decisions for us. This is exceptionally dangerous especially because it can not be consciously controlled. I have noticed this same experience throughout the news and various crime shows. When something or someone personally affects you, your decisions will also be drastically affected. Emotions are overly powerful and usually can not be changed. Although, some do believe that emotions can be changed if a drastic event occurs, our split decisions regarding our emotions will most likely be the same whether we

The book “Predictably Irrational” was written by Dan Ariely in 2008, and it is considered to be a best-seller in the United States. Dan Ariely is a professor of Duke University and works in the new field of Behavioral Economics. The book is mostly focused on helping us better understand our decision-making processes, and also become an unavoidable source of information when creating public policy. Ariely focused in why people make irrational decisions, He conducted 13 experiments and he explains every single one of them. He also teaches us that we have no idea of things and also keeping too many doors open has a higher than what those opportunities really worth. In addition Dan Ariely want to teach us the mysterious way of the human mind, of why we do what we do in certain situations and why we act totally irrationally. The author gives different examples on experiment made on top universities.i will give brief summary of most of the chapters, in order to better understand the main idea that the author tried to bring by writing the book.

One may experience cognitive dissonance when he or she has performed an undesirable action that is inconsistent with his or her belief of his or herself (Plous, 1993). The self-perception theory explains this dissonance by how people think of themselves (Plous, 1993). People naturally tend to believe they are good people, so actions inconsistent with their thoughts create an unsettling feeling. To reduce this feeling, an individual tries to justify his or her actions. In order to justify the decision, an individual can revoke the decision, increase or decrease the attractiveness of the decision, or minimize the importance of the decision.

I would occasionally open up Adobe Illustrator and start crafting an idea I had, but I would soon lose my train of thought and end up staring at my computer screen wondering why didn’t have any creative ideas. After weeks of getting nowhere on the designs, I had yet to contact the client and was starting to feel embarrassed for taking on more than I could handle. It was inevitable that this one question pop into my head: how could I possibly make a living in a field based on my creative ideas if I don’t even have the drive to create a single logo? That is when I finally realized my problem; it wasn’t that I had no creative ideas, it was that I looked at the project as a side job, which caused me think of it as somewhat unimportant. Once I opened my eyes and realized the true importance of the tasks I was involving myself with, I started to have more focus. I began to involve myself more heavily in my graphic design work. I have since created an official logo for a friend’s summer business as well as multiple icons for my brother’s

The first step to understanding why we make these sometimes-irrational decisions is gaining knowledge on the brains reactions. In order to make sense of these decisions, we must understand the different impacts certain influences have on us. “Neuromarketing is the window into the human mind that we’ve long been waiting for.” (Lindstrom) He hopes his research will shed some light on this very topic.