Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions in Science and Inquiry

May 31, 2015 Petra X rated it liked it

Shelves: popculture-anthropology, 2015-reviews, psycho-neurology-crime, reviewed, 2015-read

鈥淚 asked them why when they persecute men, for religion or colour it was seen by the world as oppression and when they persecute women, it was dismissed as tradition.鈥� Emer Martin

This book is generally brilliant if you ignore the misogyny. It is a book written by a man about a man's world for men. The "Our' in the title does not include half the world.

The misogny, the putting down of fat women, ugly ones, old ones in this often otherwise insightful and percipient book is making me groan. The a 鈥淚 asked them why when they persecute men, for religion or colour it was seen by the world as oppression and when they persecute women, it was dismissed as tradition.鈥� Emer Martin

This book is generally brilliant if you ignore the misogyny. It is a book written by a man about a man's world for men. The "Our' in the title does not include half the world.

The misogny, the putting down of fat women, ugly ones, old ones in this often otherwise insightful and percipient book is making me groan. The author is trying to prove something we all know, that we (he uses 'we' and 'our' to sound inclusive, but he only means men really) do not make good decisions when sexually aroused. To that end he sets up an experiment where the men, MIT students, will have to answer a set of questions 'sober' and while they are wanking to pictures of buxom young women flashed on their computers.

The questions include, Would you want to have sex with a really fat woman? An ugly one? A woman over 50? All the undesirable women.

All these women are put down as sexual objects these really clever guys wouldn't want to have sex with unless they were so aroused by any stimuli they didn't care. That their general powers of discernment and decision-making ie. we don't screw fat,ugly or old women, would go by the board because at that stage they'd screw anything. Also, that in such an aroused state, those clever MIT men, future leaders of technology and business, perhaps even footballers) those men might deliberately get a woman drunk and/or persist in pushy or downright aggressive sexual advances even after she had said 'no' and they wouldn't give a monkeys about using a condom either.

(Part of me wonders how those men felt who had girlfriends who didn't look like supermodels).

Personally I think he wrote up the experiment so as he could begin with describing the visual of a cling-film (saran wrap to Americans) wrapped computer (to protect it from splashes of semen) flashing porn and questions and a man 'furiously wanking with his left hand' while propped up on the bed.

Ok, so I'm predictably irrational about books that slag off my half the human race. You know that I will pick up the misogyny and be compelled to write about it. ...more

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Mar 14, 2010 David Rubenstein rated it it was amazing

Shelves: psychology, nonfiction

While there is nothing truly new in this book, it is written very clearly and concisely. Unlike some other books of this genre, this book does not ramble on and on about irrelevant subject. The author makes this book a very interesting read.

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Jan 02, 2009 Dan rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, economics

I found Predictably Irrational to be an appealing introduction to recent work in behavioral economics that bears, as some reviewers have noted, considerable similarity to research done in social psychology over the past decade. The not-overly-compelling question of which academic discipline to categorize this sort of work aside, the book's description of Ariely's group's experiments makes for engaging reading. Ariely's style is affable but does get repetitive, so I'd recommend dipping into the b ...more

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