How to Trick Ourselves into Acting More Reasonably
Even if we're perfectly logical in our minds, we can behave irrationally. Some of our unreasonable behaviors can be predicted and exploited.
No matter how much we try to deny it, we don’t go through life with perfectly rational behavior. Educated and rational — very separate qualities — people try to preempt their unreasonable behaviors. But understanding the predictable ways we act unreasonably lets us use those qualities, not just avoid them.
Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational is an entertaining guide through some of the unreasonable patterns that are common across humans. For example, we’re more likely to feel better after taking expensive medicine than cheap medicine. That’s a detailed finding that adds new layers to what we understand about the placebo effect.
Under certain conditions, we’re happier to help someone else for free than when we’re paid to do so. We even get tricked into paying more for a product if we’re initially given something free.
These are some of the interesting quirks that Ariely explores, providing an entertaining and useful look at some of our strangest and most common automatic tendencies.
Trick Yourself into Unpleasant Procedures
In 1995, Ariely was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and joined an experimental study of Interferon as a treatment.
Ariely noted that “Interferon was initially approved by the FDA for treatment of hairy cell leukemia.” It had many of the side effects that came with cancer treatments, including nausea, vomiting, headaches, and other unpleasant symptoms. Ariely had to inject the medicine himself. That meant subjecting himself to “16 hours” of unpleasant side effects plus the injection itself three times a week for six months.
“At the end of the six-month trial, the doctors told me that I was the only patient in the protocol who had followed the regimen in the way they designed it. Everyone else in the study skipped the medication numerous times, which was hardly surprising, given the challenges.”
Ariely had a simple solution to finish the treatment. He planted a reward after the injection to associate his injection with something positive. In his case, it was movies in his hammock. (He points out how much he loves movies, so your reward will probably be different.)
“In order to overcome many types of human fallibility,” Ariely wrote, “I believe it’s useful to look for tricks that match immediate, powerful, and positive reinforcements with the no-so-pleasant steps we have to take toward our long-term objectives.”
We’re Honest with Money, Cheaters with Stuff
One of the most surprising patterns Ariely found concerned cheating. Ariely asked MIT students to participate in an experiment. All they had to do was solve 20 math problems.
“The experiment began similarly in each case,” Ariely wrote, “but ended in one of three different ways. When the participants in the first group finished their tests, they took their worksheets up to the experimenter, who tallied their correct answers and paid them 50 cents each. The participants in the second group were told to tear up their worksheets…and simply tell the experimenter their score in exchange for payment.”
The third group was the most different. They discarded their tests, too, but the students were paid in tokens. Then the students would go to another professor to exchange those tokens for 50 cents each. The results were:
Graded by experimenter - 3.5 right questions answers on average
Threw tests away and paid cash - 6.2 right questions on average
Threw tests away and paid tokens - 9.4 right questions on average
Ariely assumed the groups of students weren’t better at math than each other. This experiment showed how much “we can rationalize our dishonesty when it is one step away from cash.”
Sound outlandish? Ariely cites examples of this kind of exaggeration in insurance fraud cases:
“…it is not the case that there are many claims that are completely flagrant, but instead many people who have lost, say, a 27-inch television set report the loss of a 32-inch set; those who have lost a 32-inch set report the loss of a 36-inch set, and so on.”
Catching Ourselves Before We Act
Knowing the right thing to do isn’t always enough. We also have to overcome our own desire to do the right thing. That sounds easy enough, but forcing ourselves to do basic chores or maintaining our morals both demand greater attention.
Predictably Irrational is a quick read that gives readers tools to overcome — or even use — our least rational impulses. Even if you don’t apply the book, it’s an entertaining look at some of our all-too-human quirks.