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Dedication

To my mentors, colleagues, and students—

who make research exciting

Contents

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

How an Injury Led Me to Irrationality and to the Research Described Here

CHAPTER 1 - The Truth about Relativity

Why Everything Is Relative—Even When It Shouldn’t Be

CHAPTER 2 - The Fallacy of Supply and Demand

Why the Price of Pearls—and Everything Else—Is Up in the Air

CHAPTER 3 - The Cost of Zero Cost

Why We Often Pay Too Much When We Pay Nothing

CHAPTER 4 - The Cost of Social Norms

Why We Are Happy to Do Things, but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them

CHAPTER 5 - The Power of a Free Cookie

CHAPTER 6 - The Influence of Arousal

Why Hot Is Much Hotter Than We Realize

CHAPTER 7 - The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control

Why We Can’t Make Ourselves Do What We Want to Do

CHAPTER 8 - The High Price of Ownership

Why We Overvalue What We Have

CHAPTER 9 - Keeping Doors Open

Why Options Distract Us from Our Main Objective

CHAPTER 10 - The Effect of Expectations

Why the Mind Gets What It Expects

CHAPTER 11 - The Power of Price

Why a 50-Cent Aspirin Can Do What a Penny Aspirin Can’t

CHAPTER 12 - The Cycle of Distrust

CHAPTER 13 - The Context of Our Character, Part I

Why We Are Dishonest, and What We Can Do about It

CHAPTER 14 - The Context of Our Character, Part II

Why Dealing with Cash Makes Us More Honest

CHAPTER 15 - Beer and Free Lunches

What Is Behavioral Economics, and Where Are the Free Lunches?

THANKS

LIST OF COLLABORATORS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ADDITIONAL READINGS

PRAISE FOR PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL

Introduction

How an Injury Led Me to Irrationality and

to the Research Described Here

I have been told by many people that I have an unusual way of looking at the world. Over the last 20 years or so of my research career, it’s enabled me to have a lot of fun figuring out what really influences our decisions in daily life (as opposed to what we think, often with great confidence, influences them).

Do you know why we so often promise ourselves to diet, only to have the thought vanish when the dessert cart rolls by?

Do you know why we sometimes find ourselves excitedly buying things we don’t really need?

Do you know why we still have a headache after taking a one-cent aspirin, but why that same headache vanishes when the aspirin costs 50 cents?

Do you know why people who have been asked to recall the Ten Commandments tend to be more honest (at least immediately afterward) than those who haven’t? Or why honor codes actually do reduce dishonesty in the workplace?

By the end of this book, you’ll know the answers to these and many other questions that have implications for your personal life, for your business life, and for the way you look at the world. Understanding the answer to the question about aspirin, for example, has implications not only for your choice of drugs, but for one of the biggest issues facing our society: the cost and effectiveness of health insurance.