Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavorial economics, says we can all be more aware of our surroundings and our decision-making process. He suggests the following five books:
We think we see with our eyes, but the reality is that we largely see with our brains. Our brain is a master at giving us what we expect to see. It’s all about expectation, and when things violate expectation we are just unaware of them. We go around the world with a sense that we pay attention to lots of things. The reality is that we notice much less than we think. And if we notice so much less than we think, what does that mean about our ability to figure out things around us, to learn and improve? It means we have a serious problem. I think this book has done a tremendous job in showing how even in vision, which is such a good system in general, we are poorly tooled to make good decisions.
This is one of my favourite books. He takes many of these findings about decision-making and shows how they work in the domain of food. Food is tangible, so it helps us understand the principles.
This is an oldie but a goodie. It’s a book that shows how when we make decisions, we think personality plays a big role. “I’m the kind of person who does this, or I’m the kind of person who does that.” The reality is that the environment in which we make decisions determines a lot of what we do. Mindless Eating is also about that – how the food environment affects us. Nudge is also about that – how we can actually design the environment or external influences to make better decisions. But The Person and the Situation was the first book to articulate how we think we are making decisions, when the reality is that the environment around us has a lot to do with it.
The Cialdini book is very important because it covers a range of ways in which we end up doing things, and how we don’t understand why we’re doing them. It also shows you how much other people have control, at the end of the day, over our actions. Both of these elements are crucial. The book is becoming even more important these days.
One of the reasons Nudge is so important is because it’s taking these ideas and applying them to the policy domain. Here are the mistakes we make. Here are the ways marketers are trying to influence us. Here’s the way we might be able to fight back. If policymakers understood these principles, what could they do? The other important thing about the book is that it describes, in detail, small interventions. It’s basically a book about cheap persuasion.
Dan Ariely is the best-selling author of The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home and Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.