How do we think about money? What caused bankers to lose sight of the economy? What caused
individuals to take on mortgages that were not within their means? What irrational forces
guided our decisions? And how can we recover from an economic crisis? In this revised and
expanded edition of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Predictably
Irrational Duke University's behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the hidden forces that
shape our decisions including some of the causes responsible for the current economic crisis.
Bringing a much-needed dose of sophisticated psychological study to the realm of public policy
Ariely offers his own insights into the irrationalities of everyday life the decisions that
led us to the financial meltdown of 2008 and the general ways we get ourselves into trouble.
Blending common experiences and clever experiments with groundbreaking analysis Ariely
demonstrates how expectations emotions social norms and other invisible seemingly illogical
forces skew our reasoning abilities. As he explains our reliance on standard economic theory
to design personal national and global policies may in fact be dangerous. The mistakes that
we make as individuals and institutions are not random and they can aggregate in the
market?with devastating results. In light of our current economic crisis the consequences of
these systematic and predictable mistakes have never been clearer. Packed with new studies and
thought-provoking responses to readers' questions and comments this revised and expanded
edition of Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world?from the small
decisions we make in our own lives to the individual and collective choices that shape our
economy.
