Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions: Difference between revisions

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 {{a|book review|}}Blame [[Malcolm Gladwell]], but after {{br|Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking}}, social psychologists of every stripe have been coming out of the woodwork to publish in the pop science market in figuring, reasonably enough, that there's a bit of money to be made on the side. We imagine ''International Journal of Psychology'' royalties would pale in comparison.
-Dan Ariely is one. His book does what it says on the tin, by way of explaining a number of social experiments that he and his colleagues have run in the last few years, loosely themed around the observation that we don’t always act as sensibly as logic would dictate.
+{{author|Dan Ariely}} is one. His book does what it says on the tin, by way of explaining a number of social experiments that he and his colleagues have run in the last few years, loosely themed around the observation that we don’t always act as sensibly as logic would dictate.
 All fine — as you would expect, some of Ariely’s examples are eyebrow raising — but it really shouldn’t be news and it certainly doesn’t require Dan Ariely to tell us that our liberal western societies aren’t as rational as we like to think (incontrovertible proof of that, not offered in Ariel’s book, being the politicians we elect and the amount of attention and money we collectively devote to cosmetics, fashion, celebrity and professional sport), especially as deeper epistemological examination reveals the idea of “rationality” isn’t wildly coherent anyway.
-The story about the Israeli daycare centre is interesting, but {{author|David Graeber}}’s {{br|Debt: The First 5,000 Years}} puts that observation in much better context to much more powerful effect.
+Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini’s investigation into whether late pickup fees on parents at a daycare centre would be effective deterrent, and which concluded quite the opposite, is interesting:
+{{quote|{{ariely daycare quote}}}}
+but even here others have done a better job: {{author|David Graeber}}’s {{br|Debt: The First 5,000 Years}} puts that observation in much better context to much more powerful effect.
 But just as some anecdotes are enlightening, the implications of others are not nearly as plain or convincing as Ariel thinks they are, and some of his experiments struck me as being particularly glib, superficial and susceptible to plenty of alternative interpretations.