The Way We Are Wired —— 《Predictably Irrational》

如 果说“人是地球上最复杂的生命形式”，应该没多少人会反对。这其中，仅占人类体重2%左右的大脑，更是人体内最神秘最让人困惑的组织结构，做为人体的感觉 中枢，信息处理中枢，它收集消化外界芜杂纷呈的信息，主宰着我们的思想情绪，左右着我们的行为决策，其中既有符合逻辑之处，也不乏令人难解的迷思，因此， 近百年来，引得无数能人智士竟折腰。

研 究人类，研究大脑，可以从各个层面，各个角度入手。身为MIT行为经济学教授的Dan Ariely，则立足于行为经济学和社会心理学的交点来观察世界，带着无数问号，对我们习以为常的行为举止展开探索之旅。传统经济学的立论：人是理性的， 一旦犯错，市场的力量也会将我们重新纳入理性的轨道。随着跨学科研究的日益普及，行为经济学做为新兴领域，借助了社会心理学分析手段，用大量的科学实验来 分解对人类行为施加影响的各种力量和因素，探求行为背后的决策过程，检验既有理论，寻找替代理论。此书做为行为经济学的通俗读本，呈现大量精心设计的原始 实验，旁征博引，夹叙夹议得为我们揭示了：人类不如自己想象得那么理性，对我们生活的方向，也并不具备自我期许的完全掌控力，人的非理性不但司空见惯，有 迹可寻，而且能被系统预测。说到底，我们不过是一枚被人类本性所操控的棋子。

Here are the key findings/points from this book:

Everything is relative:

• Humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don't have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly.(人们很少做不加对比的选择。我们关注的是物品与其他相比的相对优劣，并以此估价。)
• Most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context.(多数人只有在具体情境下才知道自己真正想要什么。)
• The way the mind is wired: we are always looking at the things around us in relation to others. (我们靠观察周围的事物以确定相互关系。我们有生以来就被比较所束缚。)
• We not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable—and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily. (我们不但倾向于比较，而且倾向于比较容易比较的，回避难以比较的。）
• We look at our decisions in a relative way and compare them locally to the available alternative.
• Decoy effect: effect:the phenomenon whereby consumers will tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated.(我在“数字追凶”的剧集中率先遭遇此名词，没想到时隔不久，再度相遇）

The fallacy of supply and demand:

• Arbitrary coherence:Initial prices are largely "arbitrary" and can be influenced by responses to random questions; but once those prices are established in our minds, they shape not only what we are willing to pay for an item, but also how much we are willing to pay for related products (this makes them coherent).(任意的一致:首次的价格是任意的，可能受任何因素影响；但一旦价格在脑中确立，它形成的不仅是对某一产品的出价意愿，还包括对其他 有关产品的出价意愿。)
  
• Anchor price:我们一旦以某一价格买了某一产品，我们也就为这一价格所锚定。
• Our first decisions resonate over a long sequence of decisions.(我们将自己锚定在初次出价上，并长期存在，影响我们的很多决定。)
• Herding: It happens when we assume that something is good (or bad) on the basis of other people's previous behavior, and our own actions follow suit.(羊群效应:基于其他人的行为来推断事物的好坏，以决定我们是否仿效。)
• self-herding:This happens when we believe something is good (or bad) on the basis of our own previous behavior. (自我羊群效应:基于我们先前的行为来推断事物的好坏，决定是否继续。)
• The determination of prices of products in traidition economics depends centrally on the assumption that the two forces (demand and supply) are independent and that together they produce the market price. Arbitrary coherence challenge these assumptions.
1. consumers don't in fact have a good handle on their own preferences and the prices they are willing to pay for different goods and experiences. (消费者的购买意愿很容易被操控。)
   
2. demand is not, in fact, a completely separate force from supply。(需求并不完全独立于供给)

Zero price effect: Zero is an emotional hot button—a source of irrational excitement.

• Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside, FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is.
  
• Humans are intrinsically afraid of loss. The real allure of FREE! is tied to this fear. There's no visible possibility of loss when we choose a FREE! item

Social norm v.s. Market norm: Why we are happy to do things but not when we are paid to do them?

1. One explaination provided by this book is:
   
• We live simultaneously in two different worlds— one where social norms prevail, and the other where market norms make the rules.When a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time.
• MONEY, AS IT turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.
• Money can remove the best in human interactions.
2. Another explaination I read from other resource is:
• Overjustification hypothesis: the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. When we do something for its own sake, because we enjoy it or because it fills some deep-seated desire, we are intrinsically motivated. On the other hand when we do something because we receive some reward, like a certificate or money, this is extrinsic motivation. Reward remind us of obligations, of being made to do things we don't want to do.
  
• Sometimes rewards do work, especially if people really don't want to do something. But when tasks are inherently interesting to us rewards can damage our motivation by undermining our natural talent for self-regulation.

The influence of Arousal:

• Every one of us, regardless of how "good" we are, systematically underpredicts the effect of passion on our behavior.
• Our inability to understand ourselves in a different emotional state does not seem to improve with experience.
• We are prone to making the wrong decisions when gripped by intense emotion.
• Perhaps there is no such thing as a fully integrated human being. We may, in fact, be an agglomeration of multiple selves.

The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control:

• Almost everyone has problems with procrastination, those who recognize and admit their weakness are in a better position to utilize available tools for precommitment and by doing so, help themselves overcome it.
• Resisting temptation and instilling self-control are general human goals, and repeatedly failing to achieve them is a source of much of our misery.
• We have problems with self-control,related to immediate and delayed gratification, the best course might be to give people an opportunity to commit up front to their preferred path of action.

Why we overvalue what we have:

• Endowment effect:the ownership of something increases its value in the owner's eyes.
• We are mostly fumbling around in the dark. Why? Because of three irrational quirks (非理性怪癖）in our human nature.
1. The first quirk is that we fall in love with what we already have.
2. The second quirk is that we focus on what we may lose, rather than what we may gain.
3. The third quirk is that we assume other people will see the transaction from the same perspective as we do.

Keeping the doors open:

• We have an irrational compulsion to keep doors open. It's just the way we're wired.
• Running from door to door is a strange enough human activity. But even stranger is our compulsion to chase after doors of little worth—opportunities that are nearly dead, or that hold little interest for us.
• The other side of this tragedy develops when we fail to realize that some things really are disappearing doors, and need our immediate attention. Sometimes these doors close too slowly for us to see them vanishing.

The Effect of Expectations:

• When we believe beforehand that something will be good, therefore, it generally will be good—and when we think it will be bad, it will bad.
• Expectations not only change our beliefs, but also change the physiology of the experience itself.
• Providing information will heighten someone's anticipated and real pleasure.
• Eepectations also shape stereotypes (a way of categorizing information, providing shortcuts in our never-ending attempt to make sense of complicated surroundings): priming research, scrambled-sentence test.
• We are trapped within our perspective, which partially blinds us to the truth.

The Power of Price:

• In general, two mechanisms shape the expectations that make placebos work: Belief + Conditioning.
  
• Placebo effect place the blurry boundary between beliefs and reality, pose dilemmas not only for scientists but also for marketers.

The Context of our character:

• We are so adept at rationalizing our petty dishonesty, our internal honesty monitor is active only when we contemplate big transgressions
• Once tempted to cheat, the participants didn't seem to be as influenced by the risk of being caught as one might think.
• People cheat when they have a chance to do so, but they don't cheat as much as they could. Moreover, once they are reminded of morality at the moment they are tempted, then they are much more likely to be honest.
• When cash is a step away, cheating is a lot easier and by a factor bigger than we could ever imagine.

总体而言，这是一本轻松有趣的读物，读的过程，也会让你停一停，想一想，继而一拍脑袋，做恍然大悟且悔之不及状（自己怎么就没想到呢？咋就着了商人的道呢？等等等等）。此外，书后列举的各相关主题的延伸阅读，也为有兴趣的读者进一步的阅读学习提供有益导引与参考。