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Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Definitely swayed by Sway
I have read some great books the past few months. One of these is Sway: The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman.
Having loved The Starfish and the Spider, I was curious as to how SWAY would live up to its touted, will change the way you think about the way you think.
Essentially SWAY is a book that seeks to identify the unseen forces that sway us in our decision making. What was fascinating is how vulnerable we all are to these psychological forces. What I often consider "rational, reasoned, logical thinking" is, admittedly, more often than not, my own "blind spots" influencing the way I think and reason.
For anyone dealing with people, ministry, organizations, church work, etc. this book will be an eye-opener. All of us tend to think of others as irrational in their behavior and thinking. But few of us believe we ourselves are influenced by these same factors. Sway helped me understand some of the deeply-rooted psychological forces at work influencing the choices I make. What often passes as "God's will" or the "right thing" is frequently more the irresistible pull of one of these hidden forces at work upon our thinking and reasoning.
"We're all susceptible to the sway of irrational behaviors. But by better understanding the seductive pull of these forces, we'll be less likely to fall victim to them in the future."
Some of the forces that sway us and are backed with fascinating real life stories and research:
loss aversion: how we overreact to perceived losses...our natural tendency to avoid the pain of loss distorts our thinking
commitment: strong resolve to stay the course to the way we have been doing things for years and our inability to react to superior strategies
value attribution: our tendency to imbue someone or something with certain qualities based on perceived value, rather than on objective data...once we attribute a certain value to a person or thing, it dramatically alters our perceptions of subsequent information
diagnosis bias: our propensity to label people, ideas, or things based on our initial opinions of them and our inability to reconsider those judgments once we've made them
chameleon effect: when we brand or label people they take on the characteristics of the diagnosis
fairness: and the great lengths to which we'll go to defend it...when it comes to fairness it's the process not the outcome that causes us to react irrationally...how important it is for people to feel they have a voice when it comes to the issue of fairness
group conformity: depends on unanimity for its power...the temptation to align ourselves with everyone else...a lone dissenter is enough to break the spell and "give permission" to break ranks with others in the group
Rating: - Put it on Your Pop Psych Bookshelf
The Brafman boys have a nice addition to the Pop Psych Lit bookshelf here. The book's applicability cuts across genres, certainly touching on business (especially management and marketing), personal improvement, relationships, psychology, and probably other areas.
They start really strong with the story of an airline crash and the pilot's commitment of several successive and compounding errors that demonstrate some of their key takeaways: commitment bias, confirmation bias, avoidance of loss, etc. The book moves along quickly and hits spots along the way; but, nothing else quite matches up to this section for teachability: its memorable and its tangible. To borrow the parlance of another quasi-pop psych title: it sticks.
Without question, "Sway" will get you thinking about some of your pwn actions and that's where I see the value for business and management and also in the family/relationships context. Joins "Nudge" and "Made to Stick" as less heralded entries in this growing and important category of nonfiction where Gladwell is the rock star and center of gravity.
Rating: - Challenge to assumption of rationality
Good effort to put scholarly studies into accessible language with a simple theme. In this case, the theme is a "sway" toward irrational behavior. The authors keep it tightly focused on a few sways - fear loss more than gain, diagnosis error, and commitment. Of these, the most interesting for these times is the idea that people negatively respond to losses far more than they positively respond to equivalent gains. The book offers suggestions to counter the sways once you recognize their existence.
Rating:  - Well Written and Easy to Understand
I've been interested in the reasons people make the types of decisions they do even when presented with the evidence that it's the wrong decision or, at best, inappropriate. This book explains the reasons in an easy-to-understand format that makes sense.
It's a quick read without a lot of the technical gobbledygook that might be present in textbooks or peer reviewed journals. It's well worth a look.
Rating: - Great content, but is there better treatment of the subject elsewhere?
The Brothers Brafman chose a truly fascinating topic for their book: the irrationalities hard-wired into the human brain that can lead us to make poorer decisions than we might otherwise. A number of books have been written about this topic of late, and this one isn't bad, but it isn't the best, either.
If you want a brief, competent and readable synopsis of the topic of the consistent ways that the human mind betrays us in our decision-making process, Sway is the book for you. If, however, you are looking for a more complete, deeper review of the subject, I recommend Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. The Brafman's actually cite some of Ariely's work in Sway. Ariely's book is just as readable as Sway, but covers the topic better and is written by someone more directly involved in the research on the topic.
Sway provides a quick overview of a very interesting topic that can help you become a better decision maker, but if you want a deeper understanding, Predictably Irrational. You won't go wrong with either book, one just covers more ground.
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