The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

Are the decisions we make on rational grounds really the correct ones? Economically and objectively speaking they may be irrational but favorable as well.

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely (Harper; 1 edition, June 1, 2010)

Dan Ariely, though this book, reasons the day-to-day decisions we make at work and in personal lives through experimentation and analysis of behavioral psychology. The book is divided into two parts. First part reasons the decisions and actions taken in a workplace based on intuitions, beliefs and hunches. Second part presents some illuminating cases on how our emotions and perceptions influence the decisions we make in personal life such as getting used to things, searching for a partner with specific traits, and how the decisions we make are widely disparate based on the format of information presented to our mind although the facts are alike.

Do Companies Get More For More?

Exorbitant compensation for CEOs has always been a matter of debate, filler for media, political rhetoric, and ire of investors. The book presents some interesting results of experiments conducted on compensation. The results are counter-intuitive  at least when it comes to jobs requiring using intellectual capacity. When it comes to physical labor, more pay may yield more output up to the physical ability. The opposite is true when it comes to compensating CEOs. There might be some hidden reasoning behind high CEO pays, which is to motivate the other employees to work harder up the ladder to be in the CEO shoes.

Why We Seek Meaning, Value, Love, and Own Our Fruit of Labor?

Many of you may have faced this situation, where you work hard to create a deliverable only to find out later that your boss puts it under the pile or even shred it. But you got paid and even commendation for the work done. Do you not care since you got compensated?

Today, we move at full throttle in a race to reach a destination that we hardly know. In this journey, we are outsourcing an increasing number of things that we think will save us time. From the meals we eat to fixing things around the house. If you bake a cake out of a cake mix which gives instructions on what out-of-the-box ingredients to add and in what quantity, to what degree can you boast of the tasty dessert as your creation?

When several of us work to solve a problem, each comes up with an idea or solution. Why do we always have a bias that the one we came up with is the better one?

Adaptation: The Key to Survival, Satisfaction, and Success.

When we put a finger into boiling water we immediately feel the heat. But when we put the finger in water and then gradually warm the water we don’t feel the water heating up until it becomes very hot. Our mind adapts to the surrounding gradually. The book presents the theory of Hedonic adaptation. When we obtain things we dream off, it excited us as soon as we have it. But the excitement fades away as time passes and we seek objects of higher excitement and the process continues. It’s like chasing Happiness on a treadmill.

Of the many potential life partners we particularly seek a person who is “compatible”. We look for traits that fit our gamut. It is impossible to find all the traits we need. So we learn to love what we have. We adapt sublimely.

How the Environment Effects Emotions and Emotions Affect Decisions?

The book presents vivid cases of events that are true to Joseph Stalin’s famous quote, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic”. Why don’t we feel the same empathy for someone faraway whose sufferings are as severe as the one’s who is in close proximity? Why, often, philanthropists found or donate largely to charities that support the research towards acute or terminal illnesses to which they or their beloved ones are victims.

Sometimes we make impulse decisions in haste when our mind is filled with negative emotions like hate or anger. These may have long term consequences that we will regret for a long time. How can we take control of our negative feelings so that our decisions are rational?

This book encourages us to question our intuition and to take a step back and analyze the decisions we will make by factoring in elements of economics, influences of emotions, and weighing alternatives. The author has shared many of his experiences from the excruciating pain he had undergone when he was injured with third degree burns and reached a point where he had to decide between keeping one of his arms and having it amputated. He made an irrational decision, which to this day he keeps questioning. The book is thought provoking, illuminating,  entertaining and helps to understand how we can take control of our mind and the decisions we make that might have a lasting effect on the path we intend to travel.