The power of absurdity

In the experiment was invited to drink 2 jars of beer, one had to add vinegar, those who knew in advance were wincing with vinegar beer, but whoever did not know would claim it better .

Is beer brewing with vinegar better than real?Photo: DDP.

Acting rationally is just an illusion, American scientist Dan Ariely said. He studied why humans often have unreasonable actions in many situations of everyday life.

Dan Ariely was shot by a large magnesium fireworks next to him when he was just 18 years old. 70% of his skin was burned. The Israeli man must lie in the hospital for 3 years, bandaging from head to toe. When he could no longer move and suffered much pain, he began to think about life's questions. Why do you love this same girl without loving others? Why is it important for others to think about him? Or basic: What motivates people in life?

After recovering, Mr. Ariely studied university psychology and began to study the strange things in human behavior by scientific methods. Today he is a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and has written a book that brings a great deal of knowledge as well as a great deal of interest in popular economic theory based on one mistake. Harmful mistake: Assume that human behavior is based on reason.

Based on this fragile foundation, according to Ariely, many generations of economists since Adam Smith have built models that affect countless areas of life - from tax collection through health policies to to the price of goods and services. In fact, the professor asserted, human behavior in daily life, in work and in love is not only logical but also illogical in a predictable way - they always commit each he made mistakes and did not learn anything through it.

The wrong way to associate

Fashion business: The interaction between supply and demand is unlikely to bring the greatest benefit to all parties.Photo: Getty Images.

Mr. Ariely proved his thesis through a series of unusual experiments. For example, he showed a group of students to look at many bottles of wine, a keyboard with a mouse, a book and a box of chocolates, and asked how much they wanted to pay for these items. Before offering the price, the participants had to record the last two numbers of their social insurance number and each product had to answer whether they wanted to pay the figure in dollars. .

Does anyone know what to think but is affected by your social insurance number? Yet the results were surprising: almost all. Students with the largest final numbers (between 80 and 99) pay 116 to 246% higher than those with the smallest final numbers (from 00 to 19).

Mr. Ariely argues that when buying decisions can be affected by random effects, one should not believe that the interaction between supply and demand will automatically lead to market prices, reflecting great benefits. Best for all parties involved.

Nor should unconditional trust in the preferences itself. Mr. Ariely pointed this out by inviting guests in a bar to drink two beers. In both cups is the same beer, but one of the two glasses has more vinegar.

The guests he said earlier had grimaced from the first sip and preferred a more pure beer. But other unknown guests saw better beer-vinegar. Ariely deduced that: When people think that something can taste disgusting, it might be like that - not because people perceive it like that, but because people expect it to be. .

When reason is overwhelmed by instinct

And then there are emotions that can appear suddenly in every rational person. Ariely wants to know how sexual stimulation leads to irrational behaviors. He gave a group of male students answers questions about their sexual life for 2 days. In the first time, they just had to imagine that they were having sex drive; while at the second time they had to watch erotic pictures and masturbate.

With the same question, the answers vary according to the state of stimulation.

While masturbating, these students weakly resisted the secret for a girl who took stimulant drugs to increase her chances of making love - the level of consent in this question increased by 420%. In contrast, the number of people who agreed to use a condom when first contacting an unknown girl decreased by 22%.

Experiments also show how much sexual stimulation affects the decision to buy a lot. After taking pictures of beautiful women, men are often willing to pay more for gifts.

In a state of emotional shock to people who often make wrong decisions, Ariely noticed. But, fortunately, no one is helpless before the power of illogicality. Those who are alert and understand that when and where people make unreasonable decisions, they can succeed in balancing their "natural deficits ."