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xeavn's review against another edition
3.0
Probably much better when it originally came out, it seemed a bit dated, and I wanted more information about some of his experiments and studies than he gave in the book.
oceandream's review against another edition
2.0
This book could probably have been written in half the words. It just dragged on. There were some interesting points, such as how reminding people about honesty can affect decisions, about how we may be happy to take a pen from work but not money, how we wrongly predict our own decisions when the emotion is removed etc. But I got bored. I skim read a lot. And I had to leave it and just keep returning to it between other books.
I agree with another reviewer that it is a shame all the experiments are conducted at universities. This doesn't reflect the whole of society.
I agree with another reviewer that it is a shame all the experiments are conducted at universities. This doesn't reflect the whole of society.
maxienorth's review against another edition
3.0
The content here isn't bad and I'm glad I read it. Interesting topic and nice overall review of a series of experiments. Otoh, I would have liked more details on the conditions and controls on some of these experiments, and could have done without some of the author commentary on female subjects that I found inappropriate (cracks on how much makeup they were wearing, thinking that the behavior of brides at the Filenes basement dress sale would lead to revoked proposals, etc)
rachelwig48's review against another edition
4.0
Some of the research seems a little staged based on how it is described and how it was executed, like the researcher wanted a particular outcome and made sure that the results matched the hypothesis or went against the hypothesis to support "predictable irrationality". However, some of the research and the results of that research matched what I have seen in retail regarding pricing and thresholds for value. It was interesting to see something that looked into the behavior of these actions.
ejones_'s review against another edition
2.0
Whewww that was difficult to finish. It's not necessarily a bad book, just too rudimentary for my liking. I'm already familiar with most of the theory and a good chunk of the references used in the chapters so it was a bit jarring to read them being explained so simply. I probably would have enjoyed this pre-studying economics. It's a cute collection of the author doing fun experiments with his friends to test out behavioural economic theory, but it's nothing exciting for me.
mgl's review against another edition
4.0
really good. if you didn't already feel intensely skeptical of modern conventional economics, you will certainly begin to doubt it after just a few chapters of Predictably Irrational. well-written, insightful, funny, and humbling to learn about human nature from the author, who mentions in the introduction observing the poor decisions of medical staff as he fought through the unimaginable pain of third-degree body burns. (!) (!?)
i picked this up ostensibly for business purposes (long story) but it's much more broad than that. people are crazy by nature, (a thesis shared by many of my favourite books) and we should acknowledge and accept this.
i picked this up ostensibly for business purposes (long story) but it's much more broad than that. people are crazy by nature, (a thesis shared by many of my favourite books) and we should acknowledge and accept this.