Irrational

Here are some notes I took while reading "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" (a book that I highly recommend) All of them are out of context here and are more like personal notes.


on Ownership
"...ownership simply changes our perspective."


on Decision Making
"What my friend (and also the donkey and Congress) failed to do when focusing on the similarities and minor differences between two things was to take into account the consequences of not deciding. The donkey failed to consider starving, Congress failed to consider the lives lost while it debated highway legislation, and my friend failed to consider all the great pictures he was missing, not to mention the time he was spending at Best Buy. More important, they all failed to take into consideration the relatively minor differences that would have come with either one of the decisions."

on Stereotypes
Research on stereotypes shows not only that we react differently when we have a stereotype of a certain group of people, but also that stereotyped people themselves react differently when they are aware of the label that they are forced to wear (in psychological parlance, they are "primed" with this label).


on Personal Image
What these results show is that people are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others.