Irrationality: the enemy within

This is a reissue of a 1992 book, and there are now many books available on cognitive biases. But research in this area since 1992 shows that the book is by no means outdated, and the findings Sutherland reports are generally still valid. So I would say that this book remains one of the better books on cognitive biases, because it has an extensive scope, summarizes many studies, and summarizes the conclusions of those studies, all in a style which is quite readable and sometimes entertaining. I can see how some 'sensitive' readers might get rubbed the wrong way by Sutherland's occasional bluntness, but I like the way he gets to the point and doesn't mince words.Because the book covers its scope well and I can find no real fault with it, I see no reason to give it less than 5 stars. Here are some key points from the book:(1) 'Irrationality' involves cognitive processes which are prone to result in inaccurate conclusions or suboptimal decisions relative to available evidence and time constraints. So irrationality will often lead to worse outcomes, but not always ('luck' is a factor also).(2) The prevalence of irrationality may be due to our cognitive processes having been evolved for physical and social environments which are different from modern life. So what appears as a problematic 'bias' today may have been adaptive in the distant past. But we also need to remember that heuristic shortcuts, though prone to bias and inaccuracy, can also be very effective in many situations, and in the real world we don't have the luxury of thoroughly analyzing everything (rationality is bounded).(3) Emotions (which can lead to self-deception and denial), stress, rewards, punishments, and even boredom can contribute to irrationality, but the issue is mostly cognitive.(4) As situations become more complex, we tend to become more irrational. So taking a more systematic approach to making decisions can be helpful as complexity increases (eg, listing pros and cons of options).(5) A good grasp of basic statistics can significantly reduce irrationality.(6) Many cognitive biases are tied to availability bias, which involves latching on to what comes to mind readily. Availability is tied to strong emotions, recency, first impressions, etc. Anecdotes feed availability bias.(7) The halo effect is when people overgeneralize and infer too much about a person from a few traits, and it can undermine the effectiveness of interviews. It's generally better to assume that people are a mix of strengths and weaknesses.(8) Deference to 'experts' and other authority figures, and conformity with groups (eg, peer pressure), are natural instincts, and they also provide people with 'cover', with the result that they can greatly compromise group effectiveness by promoting groupthink (homogenization of group cognition), increasing risk taking by the group, and even promoting violent group behavior. There can be a vicious cycle here, where group dynamics make groups become increasingly extreme rather than more moderated, and increasingly hostile towards other groups. Contrary to common opinion, sports increase this hostility rather than decreasing it. Groups may also be irrational because of individuals in the group putting their own interest ahead of that of the group in various ways (ingratiating themselves with group leaders, refusing to speak up because it may compromise their position in the group, etc.).(9) People are often NOT open-minded. We tend to filter and interpret according to what we want to believe, and once someone has a firm belief, presenting them with disconfirming evidence can cause them to rationalize in a way that results in the belief becoming even firmer; we're good at 'making up' explanations for things. This confirmation bias can affect our basic perception and our memory, not just our cognition, and can result in 'illusory correlation', where we falsely perceive a relationship between things. So it's important to sometimes test our beliefs by deliberately trying to falsify them, simultaneously consider multiple competing hypotheses, and consider both positive and negative cases.(10) Even when correlations are real, it's important not to mix up cause and effect, nor ignore 'common causes' (causes which the correlation between two effects, with neither effect being a cause of the other). When multiple causes contribute to an effect, we sometimes will pick out the most cognitively available one as the dominant cause.(11) Combining implausible and plausible information tends to make the implausible information and its source appear more plausible and credible.(12) Anecdotes and small samples are often non-representative of overall trends and can result in incorrect inferences. But beware that even large samples can be biased for various reasons (eg, self-selection bias).(13) We often fail to recognize that many small probabilities can add up to a large probability in cumulative situations (eg, event risk vs lifetime risk), whereas the probability of an event will be reduced to the extent that a concurrence of factors is needed for the event to occur (ie, joint probability).(14) A 'slippery slope' can be thought of as a process of normalizing deviance.(15) We generally tend to be more concerned with avoiding losses than making gains. It may be that losses cause more pain than gains cause pleasure. Insurance is an example where we (rationally) take a definite but smaller loss in order to prevent an uncertain but larger loss.(16) Continuing in an unpromising direction or refusing to cut losses may be due to sunk-cost bias. The remedy is to focus on the future, rather than the past (other than learning from the past).(17) Offering a substantial reward for performing a task which is inherently pleasant can backfire by causing that task to become devalued. This has implications for education and employee compensation.(18) People will tend to dislike something more if it's forced on them rather than freely chosen.(19) Punishing children, and neglecting them when they cry, are strategies which usually backfire.(20) We have some bias towards short-term focus, often to the detriment of our long-term interests.(21) The way questions, situations, and options are framed can dramatically (and irrationally) influence what decisions are made. The 'power of suggestion' exploits this, and the 'anchoring bias' is an example of this.(22) Overconfidence bias can result in our overestimating our ability to make predictions about the future and overestimating our knowledge and skill in general, as well as the hindsight bias of thinking that we would have made a better prediction or decision in the past than someone else did. Hindsight bias is also driven by inaccurate memories of past events, as well as our knowledge of actual outcomes and our ability to generate causal explanations (which may not be accurate), which can lead us away from considering alternative possible outcomes. Hindsight bias can inhibit our learning from the past and thus prevent recurrence of mistakes. 'Experts' are as prone to these biases as anyone else, and in some cases more prone to them.(23) We tend to take personal credit for successes, while blaming situations for our failures. But we tend to take the opposite views with the successes and failures of others. And we tend to assume that other people are more similar to us than they actually are.(24) Bad ergonomic design (eg, instrumentation layout) can contribute to human errors and failures. Designers need to account for the limitations and tendencies of human operators, including how operators may change their behavior in unexpected ways in response to changes in system design.(25) Risk assessment can be extraordinarily difficult with complex systems. And risks which are insidiously 'spread out' in time and space tend to be taken less seriously than risks which can cause a concentrated loss, even though the former may represent a much higher overall risk.(26) Our bounded rationality and need to satisfice can lead to irrationality in various ways, such as our neglecting major factors and/or overweighting minor factors when making decisions. On a broader level, we may also spend too little time on major decisions and too much time on minor decisions.(27) 'Regression to the mean' is the tendency for extreme events to be most likely followed by events which are less extreme, rather than comparably or more extreme. It's therefore irrational to expect that extreme events will continue in the same extreme direction, or to be surprised when they don't.(28) Our intuition/judgment is often less accurate than formal analysis, even though we tend to be (over)confident about our intuition/judgment. But the judgment of groups is usually (not always!) better than that of individuals, since errors tend to cancel out in groups. Boredom, fatigue, illness, and situational distractions can all compromise judgment. This issue applies to interviewing as well, so formal testing is a useful interviewing method.(29) The perceived marginal benefit of money tends to decrease as we have more money.(30) We tend to not accurately predict how we will feel emotionally in situations we haven't previously experienced (eg, marriage, career change, relocation, etc.).(31) Irrationality can be reduced by working hard to make a habit of rationality.

While the book has some interesting insights into the irrational decision people make, very little is new information. Chances are that you have read most of this information in other books or articles.On the other hand, his last few chapters go into rating decisions on the basis of a numerical system (say 1 to 5). But in most cases the arguments for or agains a decision have no known outcome. For example, if you think you will live to be 90, you would give the decision to have back surgery a high rating (rather than live with the pain). On the other hand if you expect to live to only 85 maximum, you would give the choice for surgery a lower rating. All you need is a memo from God to tell you when you will die.I would not discourage you from reading the book. I had fun taking the "pieces apart." But chances are that you could spend your time more productively.

I'm now on 2/3 of the book and I find it fantastic. I find it much better than Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, but definetly has a different style than that one. This one is more scientifical and less funny so to speak, like less of a story. Some readers I guess would preffer Dan's book.

read it in itorigiinal publication 15 years ago loaned it and never got it back was so pleased to see it reissued and updated as micheal palin would put it ‘’a ripping yarn‘’, a thoroughly enlightening and entertaining book, if not slightly worrying about the decisions politicians and bureacrats make.

I just recently purchased this book and it was written some time ago (early 1990s) and doesn't have the objectiveness one might expect from newer works. I like a science-oriented book to cite some results of a test, study or expereiment, and let those results suggest something. I'm happy to have the author expound on the result. "Irrationality" often had statements of fact that weren't clearly supported, again, probably just reflecting the time it was written in. Readers expect a bit more now days.

Fun book to read to discovered some surprising ways we humans are utterly irrational. It is read too fast for comfort, however.

The book covers most areas of irrational decision making in a way that make it easy to follow and make transferrals to ones own setting. Widely useful

We are more irrational than I thought!

This book should be included in the curriculum of every school. It can be life changing for most normal people. It takes the mystery out of why some of us don't understand others and why we all can and do make what really are plain stupid decisions. It should be mandatory and tested reading reading for every politician in the, also police, social workers and all legal professionals. The knowledge in this book could have saved lives, millions of them in the past, and certainly still could in the future. I have read it twice and still keep it handy to read the odd chapter or page again. Don't just think about it just buy it and read it straight away.

Some of the reviews seemed to indicate that this was a good text - certainly the subject matter itself is of great potential interest. I, irrationally it seems, was swayed by these reviews and purchased the text.I had expected a book with some depth but got a superficial treatment.Some of the reports of various experiments were interesting but not developed sufficiently to fully satisfy. Some comments are fine (eg the section on the irrelevance of sunk costs in financial decision making) but there is, for me, too much unsubstantiated opinion in the text.Some of the "analysis" of decisions, now shown to have had poor/disastrous outcomes, is like that of the armchair pundit who, with the benefit of hindsight and further information, knows exactly what should have been done.I usually hoard books in both hard copy form and in Kindle form and am loathe to get rid of them. This Kindle book has been deleted.Overall a very disappointing and shallow read.

Talk of repeating one's self. The book, ironically is the perfect illustration of being irrational. Tiresome.

Irrationality pulls in information from a vast array of experiments and psychological studies, presenting them in an interesting and easy to understand way. Bullet-point summaries at the end of each chapter provide a useful and sometimes amusing recap of detailed explorations of human fallibility. Sutherland establishes some of the most common causes of irrational behaviour in the first few chapters, allowing them to be referred to throughout.Towards the latter half of the book he does occasionally drift into territory most would describe as "incorrect" rather than "irrational": I did feel at times that he had lost sight of his original remit, particularly when he was defending his classification of some human errors as irrational. However, for the most part he keeps a good pace and straight course through the subject matter.Some of the evidence cited is a little thin (very small sample sizes, unpublished papers), but in a pop-science book which covers so much ground a bit of license can arguably be allowed.Overall a thought-provoking and worthwhile read.

This book covers a wide spectrum of human irrationality. This is the way the human mind makes decisions and forms beliefs that when critically analysed seem categorically unreasoned. The author, Stuart Sutherland details quite a broad range of illogical mishaps. Here's just a sample:- People conform to peer groups without really thinking about a decision- People are more likely to exaggerate an opinions about a specific issue if they are surrounded by people who have similar opinion about that issue.- People are less likely to change an opinion if they have made that opinion publically known- Behaviour and decision making can be influenced by what one is wearingWhat differentiates this book from something that your granny might just tell you is the author doesn't just make these claims but actually substantiates them all usually by referencing clinical pyschological experiments which are on the hole very interesting. For example, the claim that people are much more likely to prefer something if they chose it themselves than if the same thing was just forced on them may sound obvious but how do we proof it in an objective manner? Well to evaluate this hypothesis, Sutherland describes a simple but clever experiment where two groups of people were given lotto tickets. Group A picked their own numbers, Group B had their numbers picked randomly and given to them. Both groups were then asked how much they would sell their tickets back for. Group A quoted much larger prices than Group B even though they had no better probability of success!That's the style throughout the book. Each chapter focuses on a different facet of human irrationality and then it's tested and examined by a clinical experiment many of which involved "stooges" (people who play a pre-determined roles in the experiment that everyone else in the experiment doesn't know about). Some erudite discussion then follows and then each chapter closes with succint bullet points summarising the conclusions of the chapter. This includes a witty assertion from the author about the irrationality just discussed.Like all pop pyschology books, there's plenty of funky buzzwords:"Availability error" - Making a judgement by the first thing that comes into our mind."Boomerand effect" - when people's beliefs are challenged they may become more convinced they are right."Bystander effect" - people are less likely to help someone the more people there are available to help.There's also some well reasoned arguments why humans are just so bad at rational thinking. To be good at critical thinking doesn't just require the emotional fortitude to concede we may be wrong but an acumne of things like probability and logic.Overall, this is a very interesting book. If you are fascinated by why humans do what they do - read it. It may also help you realise that some irrational behaviour (that you may find extremly funny or downright annoying) is very much hard wired in all of our heads!