Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal has a book review of two books demonstrating how people choose irrationally. The first is Ori & Rom Brafman’s Sway, and the second is Marc Gerstein’s Flirting with Disaster.
(Earlier this year, I read Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness, a book that addresses similar themes.)
Here is a result from a study that the book reviewer cites to give a flavor for these books —
Linda is a 31 year old woman who was concerned while in college about social justice and discrimination. Which is more probable: (a) that she became a bank teller, or that (b) she became a bank teller and feminist activist?
The tendency to choose (b) is strong, but that’s not a rational choice. The broader choice (a) is rationally more probable than the narrower one (b).
Examples and studies like these make for interesting puzzles.