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The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
Reviewed by D. S. Cheema
DAN Ariely, a social scientist and behavioural economist, is the New York Times best-selling author of Predictably Irrational. Only a brave man like Dan, with full-blooded passion for what he believes in, can produce a path-breaking book like this after suffering third-degree burns on 70 per cent of his body and spending three long years in hospital. The present book, as well as his earlier one, uses medical experiences and academic research to ask and answer some intriguing questions. His works reveal the multiple biases that lead human beings into making irrational decisions. He has beautifully woven everyday experiences and ground-breaking research to explain how many seemingly illogical forces blind our reasoning ability and lead us into making wrong decisions.
The chapter, "The Meaning of Labour", concludes that employee motivation and happiness beyond monetary compensation can be increased and sustained when one gets a feeling of meaning, purpose and one’s involvement in completion of the task. According to the author, "the translation of joy into willingness to work seems to depend to a large degree on how much meaning we can attribute to our own labour". If a company does not involve an employee in the bigger picture of why he is doing what he is doing, the employees cannot give their heart and soul for the task. One’s tendency to get over-involved and over-value what one creates is the subject matter of another chapter. When we invest more effort in any thing, our affection and valuation of that increases, but only when we see it completed. When the effort is not fruitful, we don’t feel so attached to it and affection and valuation decrease drastically. The irrationality of "the not-invented-here bias", which is almost universally applicable, has been critically analysed in another chapter. In the scientific world, this bias is fondly called "tooth brush theory". The idea being that though every one needs a tooth brush, no body wants to use any one else’s. The downside of such a thought process is that organistions and individuals start living in the world of self-sufficiency, which usually is the beginning of the end of their growth. On the other hand, upside of such thinking is that since you own the ideas, you are likely to take pride in investing effort in it; you get more committed to the task and the chances of success improve tremendously. Dan also has very interesting views on one of the deepest-seated emotion we have—settling scores with others or seeking revenge. Every wise man warns us against the benefits of revenge, yet many of us are tempted to even suffer to get the pleasure of punishing others who have been unfair to us as per our own assessment. Revenge can also be useful if motivation for revenge helps you to achieve what you want. Many a success stories are built around the concept, "the best form of revenge is massive successes". We all know that all creatures, including humans, acclimate or get used to almost any thing over a period of time. The author has a deep insight into how adaptation works and to what degree it changes our lives, for better or worse. The author discusses the process of hedonic adaptation and shares his personal experiences of pain and pleasure. Understanding of hedonic adaptation can help one to get more out of life. For example, it is better to get done with pain or unpleasant task as early as possible, without any postponing or interruption as one is likely to suffer less this way. However, you can get more pleasure out of any activity which you enjoy. Online dating is the subject matter of another chapter. The author feels that though online dating is a good idea, yet it is not useful unless it is done in a more humanly compatible way. This service can be designed in much better fashion, if limitations of human beings are appropriately taken into account It is a common observation that whereas most people possess incredible sensitivity to the suffering of one individual, they are insensitive to the suffering of many. According to the author, the reasons for this irrational behaviour are physical and psychological proximity to the victim, vividness, i.e., how detailed is the information that is available and the "drop-in-bucket" effect, i.e., the perception that single effort cannot make much of a difference. The phenomenon of short-term emotions which prompt individuals to act impulsively, resulting in a long-term effect, has been analysed in great detail in another chapter. Unlike a perfectly rational human being, most of our decisions are engulfed by pleasant or unpleasant emotions we go through. The author also concludes that while taking the basic types of decisions, gender does not play any role. However, while making more complex type of decisions, there is a difference in approach of men and women. The last chapter, "Lessons from our Irrationalities", highlights the importance of experiments as the best method to learn what actually works and what does not. This is what he has to say about his efforts: "These are only the first steps of exploring our irrational side, and the journey ahead is long and exciting". Interesting anecdotes and
experiments make the book highly readable. The author introduces a dose
of magical realism to a world most of the times preoccupied with the
manifested reality. Since irrationality can have positive as well as
negative impact on our lives, the book has the potential to make a
perspective shift in the way readers think.
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The
very first chapter shatters the myth of dishing out high financial
rewards for getting better performance from workers. High rewards are
not intrinsically bad, but giving these to particular type of people and
up to a particular level only gets the desired results. Rewards/bonuses
in simple mechanical type of jobs can definitely secure higher
performance, but the opposite may happen when people are required to use
their brains, i.e., when they are performing jobs which require
creativity, innovation or analytical thinking. Sometimes increased
expectation of reward can cause anxiety and stress, resulting in
distracting thoughts which further result in lower performance. Hence,
using money to motivate people is actually a double-edged weapon which
cuts both ways.