Book Review: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Ori Brafman

Ori Brafman (Author)

› Visit Amazon's Ori Brafman Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

See search results for this author

Are you an author? Learn about Author Central

(Author), Rom Brafman (Author)

Just finished reading my first book for September. The book was an easy read when considering a majority of it I was reading through noisy bus commutes. Anyone can probably read through the book in a day or two, but I kind of got bored between certain chapters so ended taking longer for me to read.

Now to the nuts and bolts of the book. The brothers Brafmans really dives into human behaviors in relation to many daily life situations and decision making in specific occupations. What I found interesting is how the social environment one lives under effects their social behaviors. It sounds straightforward to believe that one encompasses their beliefs' based on life experiences, therefore the environment where he/she lives will have associations with their experiences. Yet Brafmans do not go through these associations as I had hope. It was near the end of the book examples that really caught my attention.

In one example they talk about a situation of placing nuclear waste based on a European community's popular vote the results of the example was very striking. In the instance when the community was asked to receive nuclear waste without compensation more than half of the community approved. (Of course it was not blunt to say they were given no compensation.) Yet when the same situation was again placed on the community's vote, and compensation was given less than a quarter of the community approved. The thinking behind was initially the population believe by holding the waste illustrated a sign of dedication and love to their country. A sacrifice that many seemed willing to take for the sake of their country's prosperity.

When compensation was put on the table, the community second guess themselves because they had a view of being taken advantage off by believing the compensation as being a bribe. Brafmans concluded that by telling the people who were willing to accept the offer and attach it with a compensation would hurt the chances of the community accepting the nuclear waste. I would imagine if this was done in China the results would be somewhat different. A country where so many individuals are poor, their willingness to sell themselves has a higher probability than in the European countries. This all comes back to where people's social standards are at.

Overall the book was good based on Brafman brothers supporting evidence for human's irrational behaviors under certain circumstances. I would recommend people who are interested in how the human brain makes decisions to read the book. Yet in the book the Brafmans lack identifying how to avoid making the wrong and sometimes deadly decisions, but still knowing that they exist can help one to at least try to anticipate their occurrence.