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Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior Kindle Edition
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Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.
Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect” (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us).
Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.
Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown Currency
- Publication dateJune 3, 2008
- File size5106 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"A breathtaking book that will challenge your every thought, Sway hovers above the intersection of Blink and Freakonomics."--Tom Rath, coauthor of the New York Times #1 bestseller How Full Is Your Bucket?
“Now we know why no one ever coined the phrase ‘rational exuberance.’ Behind the surprising ways we all make choices, the Brafmans find biology, humanity, and the wisdom of our collective experience. As a longtime student of how financial decisions are made, I found their insights utterly fascinating. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop—and I suspect the Brafmans could tell you exactly why!”
--Sallie Krawcheck, CEO, Citi Global Wealth Management
"Count me swayed--but in this instance by the pull of entirely rational forces. Ori and Rom Brafman have done a terrific job of illuminating deep-seated tendencies that skew our behavior in ways that can range from silly to deadly. We'd be fools not to learn what they have to teach us."--Robert B. Cialdini, author of New York Times bestseller Influence
“Brilliant.”
—Klaus Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum
"A page-turner of an investigation into how our minds work . . . and trick us. Think you behave rationally? Read this book first."--Timothy Ferriss, author of the New York Times #1 bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek
"Sway helped me recognize an aspect of irrational behavior in my experimental work in physics. Sometimes I have jumped into some research that didn't feel quite right . . . but some irrational lure, such as the hope of quick success, pulled me in."--Martin L. Perl, 1995 Nobel Laureate in Physics
*DISCLAIMER: If you decide to buy this book because of these endorsements, you just got swayed. One of the psychological forces you’ll read about in Sway..
About the Author
Rom Brafman holds a Ph.D. in psychology and has taught university courses in personality and personal growth. His current research interests focus on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. He has a private practice in Palo Alto, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ANATOMY of an ACCIDENT
Taking off at Tenerife.
The oversensitive egg shoppers.
The lure of the flat rate.
Would you like insurance with that?
So long, Martha's Vineyard.
The passengers aboard KLM Flight 4805 didn't know it, but they were in the hands of one of the most experienced and accomplished pilots in the world. Captain Jacob Van Zanten didn't just have a knack for flying. His attention to detail, methodical approach, and spotless record made him a natural choice to head KLM's safety program. It was no surprise, then, that the airline was keen to show him off. One magazine ad featuring the smiling captain captured it all: "KLM: from the people who made punctuality possible." Even seasoned pilots--not exactly the type of individuals prone to swoon--regarded him as something of a celebrity.
On the flight deck of the 747, en route from Amsterdam to Las Palmas Airport in the Canary Islands, Van Zanten must have felt a sense of pride. Today's trip was moving along with the smooth precision that had become his hallmark. The schedule was straightforward: land in Las Palmas, refuel, and transport a new set of passengers back home to Holland.
But then Van Zanten got an urgent message from air-traffic control. A terrorist bomb had exploded at the airport flower shop, causing massive chaos on the ground; Las Palmas would be closed until further notice.
The captain knew that at times like this the most important thing was to remain calm and proceed with caution. He had performed drills preparing for this kind of situation countless times. In fact, Van Zanten had just returned from leading a six-month safety course on how to react in exactly this kind of situation.
Following standard procedure, the captain obeyed orders to land fifty nautical miles from his original destination, on the island of Tenerife. There, at 1:10 p.m., his plane joined several others that had been similarly diverted.
Now, you don't need to be a seasoned airline pilot to appreciate that Tenerife was no JFK. It was a tiny airport, with a single runway not meant to support jumbo jets.
With his plane safely parked at the edge of the runway, the captain checked his watch. Seeing the time, he was struck with a worrisome thought: the mandated rest period.
The Dutch government had recently instituted strict, complicated rules to which every pilot had to adhere. After getting in touch with HQ and performing some quick calculations, Van Zanten figured the latest he could take off was 6:30 p.m. Flying after the start of his mandated rest period was out of the question--it wasn't just against policy; it was a crime punishable by imprisonment. But taking the rest period would open its own can of worms. Here in Tenerife there would be no replacement crew to take over. Hundreds of passengers would be stranded overnight. That would mean the airline would have to find them a place to stay, and there weren't enough hotel rooms on the island. In addition, a delay here would initiate a cascade of flight cancellations throughout KLM. A seemingly minor diversion could easily become a logistical nightmare.
It's easy to imagine the stress that Van Zanten was experiencing and why he became so determined to save time. It was like being stuck at a red light when you're late for a big meeting. Try as you might to stay calm, you know that your reputation is on the line; your frustration grows, and there's really not much you can do. But there was one thing Van Zanten could do: the captain decided to keep the passengers on board, so that when Las Palmas reopened, he could get back in the air immediately.
But the air-traffic control personnel who worked at Tenerife tower were of a different mind-set. Here was a small airport on a tropical island, now inundated with planes from all over the world that had been diverted because of the Las Palmas explosion. Not only was the tower understaffed, but the air-traffic controllers were in no hurry to get planes out of the gate; they were, in fact, getting ready to listen to a live soccer match on their transistor radios. Twenty minutes after landing, Van Zanten received word from the tower that he should let his passengers off: it looked like they would be here for a while.
From there, events at Tenerife continued to move forward like molasses. Twenty minutes turned into an hour. The captain spent every moment thinking of ways to minimize the delay. He held a strategy session with his crew. He called KLM headquarters to find out exactly how much time he had left before the mandated rest period kicked in. An hour on the ground had turned into two; then the captain came up with another idea. He decided to refuel at Tenerife and thus shave half an hour off the turnaround in Las Palmas.
But this time-saving idea backfired. As soon as Van Zanten started refueling, word came from Las Palmas that the airport had finally reopened. But it was too late to stop the thirty-five-minute refueling process.
Finally, just when it looked like the plane was set to go, nature threw its own wrench into the plan: a thick layer of fog descended upon the runway.
Kicking himself over his decision to refuel, Van Zanten became even more intent on getting under way. With the fog growing thicker, visibility dropped to just 300 meters--so poor that gazing out the cockpit window the captain couldn't see the end of the runway.
Van Zanten knew that every moment the fog got worse made it that much likelier that the Tenerife tower would shut down the airport. He saw that his window of opportunity to get out of Tenerife before an overnight stay was closing. It was now or never--time to go.
But what the captain did next was completely out of character. Van Zanten revved up the engines, and the plane lurched down the runway.
"Wait a minute," Van Zanten's copilot said in confusion. "We don't have ATC clearance."
"I know that," replied the captain as he hit the brakes. "Go ahead and ask."
The copilot got on the radio and received airway clearance--approval of the flight plan. But the tower said nothing about the vital takeoff clearance. And yet, determined to take off, Van Zanten turned the throttles to full power and roared down the foggy runway.
The jumbo jet was gaining momentum when, seemingly out of nowhere, the scariest sight Van Zanten could have imagined appeared before him. A Pan Am 747 was parked across the runway, and Van Zanten was approaching it at take-off speed.
There was no way to stop or swerve. Instinctively, Van Zanten knew that his only chance was to take off early. "Come on! Please!" the captain urged his plane. He pulled the aircraft's nose up desperately, dragging its tail on the ground and throwing up a blinding spray of sparks.
The nose of Van Zanten's plane managed to narrowly clear the parked 747. But just when it looked like he was in the clear, the underside of Van Zanten's fuselage ripped through the top of the Pan Am plane.
The KLM plane burst into a fiery explosion as it hurtled another five hundred yards down the runway.
Van Zanten, his entire crew, and all of his passengers were killed. In all, 584 people lost their lives that day.
The aeronautical community was stunned. It was by far the deadliest airplane collision in history. An international team of experts descended on Tenerife airport. They examined every bit of evidence, interviewed the eyewitnesses, and scrutinized every moment of the cockpit recorders in an attempt to pinpoint the cause of the accident.
The experts quickly ruled out a mechanical failure or terrorist attack. Piecing together the events of that day, it was clear that the other plane on the runway, Pan Am Flight 1736, had missed a taxiway turnoff and ended up in the wrong place. The thick fog contributed to the disaster. Van Zanten couldn't see the Pan Am plane, the Pan Am pilot couldn't see him, and the tower controllers couldn't see either one of them. On top of that, the tower was undermanned and the controllers were distracted by the day's events.
Despite all these factors, though, the tragedy would never have occurred if Van Zanten hadn't taken off without clearance. Why would this seasoned pilot, the head of safety at the airline, make such a rash and irresponsible decision?
The best explanation the investigators could come up with was that Van Zanten was feeling frustrated. But that didn't quite add up. Feeling frustrated is one thing; completely disregarding protocol and forgetting about safety is another.
Clearly, Van Zanten was experienced. Clearly, he was well trained. And clearly, he was good at what he did. How could he cast aside every bit of training and protocol when the stakes were so high?
The aeronautical experts turned over every stone in their search for an explanation. But there was something in Tenerife that remained completely hidden. Alongside the rolling fog and crowded airfield, an unseen psychological force was at work, steering Van Zanten off the path of reason.
A growing body of research reveals that our behavior and decision making are influenced by an array of such psychological undercurrents and that they are much more powerful and pervasive than most of us realize. The interesting thing about these forces is that, like streams, they converge to become even more powerful. As we follow these streams, we notice unlikely connections among events that lie along their banks: the actions of an investor help us to better understand presidential decision making; students buying theater tickets illuminate a bitter controversy in the archeological community over human evolution; NBA draft picks point to a fatal flaw in common job-interview procedures; women talking on the phone show why a shaky bridge can be a powerful aphrodisiac.
Charting these psychological undercurrents and their unexpected effects, we can see where the currents are strongest and how their dynamics help us understand some of the most perplexing human mysteries. These hidden currents and forces include loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid possible losses), value attribution (our inclination to imbue a person or thing with certain qualities based on initial perceived value), and the diagnosis bias (our blindness to all evidence that contradicts our initial assessment of a person or situation). When we understand how these and a host of other mysterious forces operate, one thing becomes certain: whether we're a head of state or a college football coach, a love-struck student or a venture capitalist, we're all susceptible to the irresistible pull of irrational behavior. And as we gain insight about irrational motives that affect our work and personal lives, fascinating patterns emerge, connecting seemingly unrelated events.
Let's examine the first of these streams, to help us solve the mystery of what happened with Captain Van Zanten. We find our first clue in an unlikely place--the egg and orange juice aisles of our neighborhood supermarket.
Professor Daniel Putler, a former researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has spent more time thinking about eggs in a year than the rest of us spend in a lifetime. He carefully tracked and studied every aspect of egg sales in southern California. Looking at the data, he found some interesting patterns. Egg sales, for instance, were typically higher during the first week of each month. Not surprisingly, they were abnormally high in the weeks leading up to Easter, only to experience a sharp decline the week after. That was all well and good, but Putler's next discovery wasn't just of use to the USDA and Al the grocer. Poring over cash-register data that reflected egg-price fluctuations, Putler identified what is referred to in economics as an "asymmetry."
Now, traditional economic theory holds that people should react to price fluctuations with equal intensity whether the price moves up or down. If the price goes down a bit, we buy a little more. If the price goes up a bit, we buy a little less. In other words, economists wouldn't expect people to be more sensitive to price increases than to price decreases. But what Putler found was that shoppers completely overreacted when prices rose.
It turns out that, when it comes to price increases, egg buyers are a sensitive bunch. If you reduce the price of eggs, consumers buy a little more. But when the price of eggs rises, they cut back their consumption by two and a half times.
Anyone who's made a shopping list with a budget in mind can tell you how this plays out. If the price drops, we're mildly pleased. But if we see that the price has gone up since last week, we get an oh no feeling in the pit of our stomachs and decide it's cereal for breakfast that week instead of scrambled eggs. This feeling of dread over a price increase is disproportionate--or asymmetric--to the satisfaction we feel when we get a good deal.
We experience the pain associated with a loss much more vividly than we do the joy of experiencing a gain. Sensing a loss as a result of the high price, the shoppers can't help but put the carton back on the shelf.
And it's not only egg buyers who are affected by the pain of a loss. A group of researchers replicated Putler's study among orange juice shoppers in Indiana and arrived at the exact same results: Midwest OJ drinkers are just as finicky about price increases as are Los Angeles omelet makers. Regardless of geography and breakfast preferences, losses loom larger than gains.
Putler's research illuminates a mystery that economists have been grappling with for years. For no apparent logical reason, we overreact to perceived losses.
This principle is key to understanding Van Zanten's actions. But before we return to Tenerife and the investigation, it's important to see how our aversion to loss plays out in our own decision making.
Think about the seemingly straightforward decision we make when we sign up for a new phone service. After wading through the phone company's electronic menus, we're presented with a choice: we can either pay for service by the minute or opt for a flat monthly fee and talk till the cows come home. Chances are that the pay-as-you-go plan is our better bet. Most of us just don't talk enough to justify a flat-rate plan.
But at this point loss aversion kicks in; we start imagining ourselves gabbing like teenagers into the night. The fear of a monstrous bill looms, and we sign up for the unlimited plan "just in case."
Economists can scold us for making a poor choice, but in deciding which service to sign up for, we're willing to sacrifice a little bit to avoid a potential loss.
AOL stumbled upon this same phenomenon when, after years of charging clients by the minute for their dial-up Internet access, it introduced a flat-billing option. The results were catastrophic, but not in the way you'd think. As AOL's CEO explained, the flat-pricing plan was "working too well." New customers were signing up in droves, and for three months AOL's servers were completely jammed. As with the phone service, Internet users wanted to avoid the perceived loss associated with pay-as-you-go.
Product details
- ASIN : B0013TTK1W
- Publisher : Crown Currency; 1st edition (June 3, 2008)
- Publication date : June 3, 2008
- Language : English
- File size : 5106 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 226 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #523,081 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #295 in Applied Psychology
- #516 in Social Psychology & Interactions
- #607 in Medical Applied Psychology
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ori Brafman is a multiple New York Times bestselling author, researcher, and entrepreneur. His upcoming book, Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership, co-authored by 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, GEN(R) Martin Dempsey, argues that today’s leaders are in competition for the trust and confidence of those they lead more than ever before. Bringing examples from business, academia, government, and the military, Brafman and Dempsey assert that the nature of power is changing and should not be measured by degree of control alone.
The White House, the world’s largest organization for financial professionals, and the Chicago Bulls alike turn to Brafman when focusing on organizational culture change, increased employee engagement, business transformations, leadership development, and adjusting to emerging technologies. He has advised all branches of the U.S. military, the Obama White House, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, NATO, and YPO, among others. His media appearances include the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, BBC, National Public Radio, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, and AP Video.
Brafman is founder and president of Starfish Leadership and co-founder of the Fully Charged Institute, which combines his work with that of Tom Rath. Brafman is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business focusing on improvisational leadership, data science, and artificial intelligence and a Senior Fellow at the Coach K Leadership & Ethics Center at Duke University.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Cool stuff: Great examples bring the ideas to life. (Hearing a master play a Stradivarius on the NY subway, the academic reaction to the Piltdown man, a surprising secret in an Israeli army leadership training course. On and on.) No need for any prior psychology knowledge. Clearly lets the reader understand the non-intuitive principles involved. Includes recent research findings in a story driven format. Not bogged down by intellectual showing off or long digressions. There are references at the back for those who want to read the original research.
What it is not: This ain't a definitive textbook. It is not new ground (but rather an overview of the field in a readable form). It doesn't get into details or any depth of why we behave in these ways, or how the behaviours may be connected. But that's OK, as long as you know you are buying a great general read not a graduate-level treatment.
The book finds new veins of gold in the mine of psychological research that has already produced Robert Cialdini's `Influence,' Scott Plous's `The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making,' and other cool books like `Nudge,' or ` Freakanomics.' An fascinating worthwhile read.
In my opinion, an socio-economic, social-psychological classic. This volume is jam-packed with keen insights about human behavior. Irrational tendencies endure like mold - they grow in the damp darkness of our existence. Ori and Rom Brafman turn the light switch on and examine the realities that are inhabiting the recesses of human perception, judgment and value-attribution. As they point out:
Once we attribute a certain value to a person or thing, it dramatically alters our perceptions of subsequent information. This power of value attribution is so potent that it affects us even when the value is assigned completely arbitrarily." (p. 55)
They go on to illuminate what they refer to as the "diagnosis bias" or:
"our propensity to label people, ideas or things based on our initial opinions of them -- and our inability to reconsider those judgments once we've made them. (p.70).
This work blends into the new thinking that appears to be oozing from the field of macroeconomics from sources like Shiller and Akerlof, as well as the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. As the Brafman's write:
"It's all about keeping valuations tentative instead of certain, learning to be comfortable with complex, sometimes contradictory information, and taking your time considering things from different angles before coming to a conclusion." (p.178)
A superb contribution - providing encouragement to those charged with expanding the boundaries of what we think we know -- and the appreciation we must resurrect for exploring the frontiers of the unknown.
Another surprise: Even though this book is based on scientific thought, it is an easy and quick read. Witty and clear, it's filled with interesting, real-life examples of behavior, such as how Steve Spurrier's unusual style of coaching college football drives his competitors mad. (I should know: I went to FSU!)
Apparently we're wired to act in irrational ways. Our brains are so averse to loss that we avoid it at all costs. People pay stupid amounts to rental-car companies for unnecessary "loss damage" protection. The head of safety at an airline takes off in a 747 without proper tower clearance, ignoring his own safety protocol, crashing and killing everyone aboard. Why? He didn't want to lose his reputation for always being on time.
Once we recognize why our brains are setting us up for failure, we can consciously make other, smarter, choices. Sway takes much of the mystery out of irrational behavior.
Here's the chapter list:
1. Anatomy of an Accident
2. The Swamp of Commitment
3. The Hobbit and the Missing Link
4. Michael Jordan and the First-Date Interview
5. The Bipolar Epidemic and the Chameleon Effect
6. In France, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth
7. Compensation and Cocaine
8. Dissenting Justice
For a companion read I'd recommend another new book, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.
Top reviews from other countries
Loss aversion(損失に対して過剰反応をし、これを回避する為に合理的には想定できないようなことをしでかす)
・ KLMの安全責任者であった機長が時間の遅れを取り戻そうと飛行機の離陸時のルール無視して引き起こした狂気の沙汰とも言える大惨事
・ 損失を確定せずに、いつか相場が反転すると期待して損切りできない投資家の心理
・ 20ドル紙幣のオークションに204ドル迄値が競り上がってしまう不思議
Value attribution(客観的なデータにも基かず直感をベースに物事を判断する)
・ 世界的なバイオリン奏者が地下鉄のホームでジーンズに野球帽といった格好でで演奏をしていても、誰も気に留めずに通り過ぎてしまう(奏者の身なり服装から有名な音楽家だとは誰も思わない→演奏している音楽のクオリティや技術も大したことないと判断してしまう)
・ 値段を上げたら急に商品が売れ出した(ものの価格を見て「高い=高級品に違いない」と判断する)
・ 同じコンサートでも高い金を払って入場した人の方が満足度が高い
Diagnosis bias (人、モノ、考え等に対して最初に下した判断に囚われ、後に、この先入観に反する客観的な情報が提供されても、従前の判断を変えることができない)
・ NBAバスケットボール選手の試合出場時間は当該選手がドラフト何位で指名されたかとの相関が圧倒的に強い(ドラフト順位が高ければ良い選手のはずという先入観が後々まで影響する)
・ 初めて会う人の性格等につき事前に知らされたイメージ(それが事実であろうが無かろうが)を払拭することができない
…..等々、興味深い例をもとに人間の判断がいかに非合理的な方向に振れるかを説明している。”Influence” (Robert Cialdini著)や”Predictably Irrational”(Dan Ariely著)と内容的に共通する部分が多い。