📺 Predictably Irrational

Dan Ariely is a psychologist who specializes in the relatively new field of “behavioral economics.” Behavioral economics focuses on the psychology of decision-making and asks why we make the choices we make. Do we approach the ideal of modern economics, which claims that we are all basically seeking to satisfy our own interests, taking into account what we know about the world and the way things work? In that case why do we do things like fall prey to addictions, go to the ends of the earth to get revenge on others for relatively small offenses, NOT steal and cheat whenever we get the chance to as economists predict that we should? In this TED talk he discusses some examples of experiments he had done on human decision making and how it is that we act irrationally, but at the same time do so in a way that is predictable and revealing about how we really work.