"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

And irrational behavior reigns again!

July 31, 2010

Books and Stuff to Read, Science, Society

1 comment

I’ve just started reading the book Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman. They are two brothers who got into seemingly different fields of business and psychology, but found that there are really interesting ideas that tie the two together.

I haven’t gotten that far in the book yet so I can’t give a full review yet, but I will highlight some interesting points that I have picked up on so far.

A lot of the concepts they bring up tie back to the idea of loss aversion, which I have blogged about in the past. The authors brought up the example of an extremely experienced commercial airline pilot who made a series of errors that led to the crash of the airliner and death of everyone on board. Long story short, the situation he was in placed him under pressure to avoid certain losses and eventually got the better of him in even the simplest decisions like waiting for takeoff clearance from the air traffic controller.

A few more things to think about:

  • diagnosis bias: when experts make an initial diagnosis and ignore all evidence against it, particularly in medical fields
  • value attribution: how the value or respect we place on or expect from a thing or person affects our view of their work
  • commitment: when we are very committed to a decision, we are more likely to behave irrationally to stay the course even if we realize we are wrong

I have so many books on my to-read list, but if you have any more suggestions, I would love to hear them!

Is heartbreak just another manifestation of loss aversion?

February 14, 2010

Books and Stuff to Read, Features

5 comments

A friend told me a few months ago that when he was going through heartbreak, he found his way through it by reading an entire graphic novel series in a slightly obsessive binge. He assured me that I would find something to help me through my heartbreak as well. This hopefully is my graphic novel series, not literally of course. For me, it is Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide.

As strange as it may seem, making sense of what is going on in my brain and in my heart seems to be the only way out of heartbreak for me. Somehow, figuring out some of the things that might be causing me to feel pain is therapeutic and somewhat exciting. I want to know why I feel the way that I feel and why things happened the way that they did. I might be able to parse out some things for that first half but probably not the second half.

Heartbreak has been so difficult to deal with because, just as the term suggests, I feel broken by the loss of love. It may at least be partly explained by loss aversion, a concept that means people strongly prefer avoiding a loss, and that feeling might be stronger than the desire to acquire a gain.

Loss aversion is a theme that comes up in How We Decide, mostly when dealing with gambling and betting. People who are losing money are more likely to keep gambling or hold on to depreciating stocks because the thought of leaving at a loss is too much to bear. Loss aversion can be linked to some irrational decisions and/or behavior.

The neuroscience behind this suggests that certain areas of the brain increase in activity when the potential gains increase and decreasing activity may represent potential losses. Neural signals could be measured to try to predict loss aversion behavior by comparing the relative activity induced by the gains and losses.

For me, the thought of not being able to create more happy memories with that person is unbearable. I feel unsatisfied with the way things ended and have the urge to hold on until things look better. This is irrational of me and I know that, but my emotions won’t let me accept that loss very easily.
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