Oct 9, 2026 · 57 min · 12 segments
In this episode number 115, we'll be sharing part two of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
Bob BoutelierHost
In the first half of the book, we discovered that human beings aren't nearly as rational as we'd like to believe.
But in the second half, things get even more interesting because Ariely begins exploring how easily our decisions can be manipulated by something as simple as ownership, options, expectations, price, and context.
The moment something becomes ours, we tend to value it more, which might explain why the person selling you a used car thinks it's worth eighteen thousand dollars while you think it's worth only fourteen thousand.
We continue projects that probably should have been killed six months ago, if not longer.
And sometimes protecting all those options prevents us from walking through the one door that actually matters.
Give two people exactly the same experience, but tell them different things up front, and they may actually experience it differently, which leads us to one of the strangest questions in the book.
Can an expensive aspirin work better than a cheap aspirin, even when they're exactly the same thing? Apparently, price doesn't just influence what we're willing to buy.
It can influence what we expect, and those expectations can influence what we experience.
But perhaps the most uncomfortable part of this half of the book comes when Ariely turns the experiments back on us.
Most of us believe we're honest, and for the most part, we probably are, except Ariely finds something fascinating.
People will sometimes cheat a little, not enough to think of themselves as dishonest, just enough to benefit and change the circumstances surrounding that decision, and the amount of dishonesty can change too.
Put actual cash into the equation, for example, and suddenly our moral accounting may work differently.
That's an increasingly interesting idea in a world where money itself is becoming less visible.
We have credit cards, digital payments, points, credits, tokens, things that have value without necessarily feeling like money.
If our irrational behaviors are predictable, can we design better systems around them? Can businesses create better choices? Can leaders create better incentives? Can consumers make better decisions? And can understanding our own irrationality help us avoid some of the traps we repeatedly set for ourselves? That's where behavioral economics becomes much more than an interesting collection of experiments.
In the first half of the book, we discovered that human beings aren't nearly as rational as we'd like to believe.
But in the second half, things get even more interesting because Ariely begins exploring how easily our decisions can be manipulated by something as simple as ownership, options, expectations, price, and context.
The moment something becomes ours, we tend to value it more, which might explain why the person selling you a used car thinks it's worth eighteen thousand dollars while you think it's worth only fourteen thousand.
We continue projects that probably should have been killed six months ago, if not longer.
And sometimes protecting all those options prevents us from walking through the one door that actually matters.
Give two people exactly the same experience, but tell them different things up front, and they may actually experience it differently, which leads us to one of the strangest questions in the book.
Can an expensive aspirin work better than a cheap aspirin, even when they're exactly the same thing? Apparently, price doesn't just influence what we're willing to buy.
It can influence what we expect, and those expectations can influence what we experience.
But perhaps the most uncomfortable part of this half of the book comes when Ariely turns the experiments back on us.
Most of us believe we're honest, and for the most part, we probably are, except Ariely finds something fascinating.
People will sometimes cheat a little, not enough to think of themselves as dishonest, just enough to benefit and change the circumstances surrounding that decision, and the amount of dishonesty can change too.
Put actual cash into the equation, for example, and suddenly our moral accounting may work differently.
That's an increasingly interesting idea in a world where money itself is becoming less visible.
We have credit cards, digital payments, points, credits, tokens, things that have value without necessarily feeling like money.
If our irrational behaviors are predictable, can we design better systems around them? Can businesses create better choices? Can leaders create better incentives? Can consumers make better decisions? And can understanding our own irrationality help us avoid some of the traps we repeatedly set for ourselves? That's where behavioral economics becomes much more than an interesting collection of experiments.
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