The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. Dan Ariely

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СКАЧАТЬ suffering from hepatitis A or B, but they couldn’t identify the strain. After a while the illness subsided, but it still slowed my recovery by flaring up from time to time and wreaking havoc on my system.

      Eight years later, when I was in graduate school, a flare-up hit me hard. I checked into the student health center, and after many blood tests the doctor gave me a diagnosis: it was hepatitis C, which had recently been isolated and identified. As lousy as I felt, I greeted this as good news. First, I finally knew what I had; second, a promising new experimental drug called interferon looked as if it might be an effective treatment for hepatitis C. The doctor asked whether I’d consider being part of an experimental study to test the efficacy of interferon. Given the threats of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis and the possibility of early death, it seemed that being part of the study was clearly the preferred path.

      The initial protocol called for self-injections of interferon three times a week. The doctors told me that after each injection I would experience flulike symptoms including fever, nausea, headaches, and vomiting—warnings that I soon discovered to be perfectly accurate. But I was determined to kick the disease, so every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening over the next year and a half, I carried out the following ritual: Once I got home, I would take a needle from the medicine cabinet, open the refrigerator, load the syringe with the right dosage of interferon, plunge the needle deep into my thigh, and inject the medication. Then I would lie down in a big hammock—the only interesting piece of furniture in my loftlike student apartment—from which I had a perfect view of the television. I kept a bucket within reach to catch the vomit that would inevitably come and a blanket to fend off the shivering. About an hour later the nausea, shivering, and headache would set in, and at some point I would fall asleep. By noon the next day I would have more or less recovered and would return to my classwork and research.

      Along with the other patients in the study, I wrestled not only with feeling sick much of the time, but also with the basic problem of procrastination and self-control. Every injection day was miserable. I had to face the prospect of giving myself a shot followed by a sixteen-hour bout of sickness in the hope that the treatment would cure me in the long run. I had to endure what psychologists call a “negative immediate effect” for the sake of a “positive long-term effect.” This is the type of problem we all experience when we fail to do short-term tasks that will be good for us down the road. Despite the prodding of conscience, we often would rather avoid doing something unpleasant now (exercising, working on an annoying project, cleaning out the garage) for the sake of a better future (being healthier, getting a job promotion, earning the gratitude of one’s spouse).

      At the end of the eighteen-month trial, the doctors told me that the treatment was successful and that I was the only patient in the protocol who had always taken the interferon as prescribed. Everyone else in the study had skipped the medication numerous times—hardly surprising, given the unpleasantness involved. (Lack of medical compliance is, in fact, a very common problem.)

      So how did I get through those months of torture? Did I simply have nerves of steel? Like every person who walks the earth, I have plenty of self-control problems and, every injection day, I deeply wanted to avoid the procedure. But I did have a trick for making the treatment more bearable. For me, the key was movies. I love movies and, if I had the time, I would watch one every day. When the doctors told me what to expect, I decided to motivate myself with movies. Besides, I couldn’t do much else anyway, thanks to the side effects.

      Every injection day, I would stop at the video store on the way to school and pick up a few films that I wanted to see. Throughout the day, I would think about how much I would enjoy watching them later. Once I got home, I would give myself the injection. Then I would immediately jump into my hammock, make myself comfortable, and start my mini film fest. That way, I learned to associate the act of the injection with the rewarding experience of watching a wonderful movie. Eventually, the negative side effects kicked in, and I didn’t have such a positive feeling. Still, planning my evenings that way helped me associate the injection more closely with the fun of watching a movie than with the discomfort of the side effects, and thus I was able to continue the treatment. (I was also fortunate, in this instance, that I have a relatively poor memory, which meant that I could watch some of the same movies over and over again.)

      

      THE MORAL OF this story? All of us have important tasks that we would rather avoid, particularly when the weather outside is inviting. We all hate grinding through receipts while doing our taxes, cleaning up the backyard, sticking to a diet, saving for retirement, or, like me, undergoing an unpleasant treatment or therapy. Of course, in a perfectly rational world, procrastination would never be a problem. We would simply compute the values of our long-term objectives, compare them to our short-term enjoyments, and understand that we have more to gain in the long term by suffering a bit in the short term. If we were able to do this, we could keep a firm focus on what really matters to us. We would do our work while keeping in mind the satisfaction we’d feel when we finished our project. We would tighten our belts a notch and enjoy our improved health down the line. We would take our medications on time and hope to hear the doctor say one day, “There isn’t a trace of the disease in your system.”

      Sadly, most of us often prefer immediately gratifying short-term experiences over our long-term objectives.^* We routinely behave as if sometime in the future, we will have more time, more money, and feel less tired or stressed. “Later” seems like a rosy time to do all the unpleasant things in life, even if putting them off means eventually having to grapple with a much bigger jungle in our yard, a tax penalty, the inability to retire comfortably, or an unsuccessful medical treatment. In the end, we don’t need to look far beyond our own noses to realize how frequently we fail to make short-term sacrifices for the sake of our long-term goals.

      WHAT DOES ALL of this have to do with the subject of this book? In a general sense, almost everything.

      From a rational perspective, we should make only decisions that are in our best interest (“should” is the operative word here). We should be able to discern among all the options facing us and accurately compute their value—not just in the short term but also in the long term—and choose the option that maximizes our best interests. If we’re faced with a dilemma of any sort, we should be able to see the situation clearly and without prejudice, and we should assess pros and cons as objectively as if we were comparing different types of laptops. If we’re suffering from a disease and there is a promising treatment, we should comply fully with the doctor’s orders. If we are overweight, we should buckle down, walk several miles a day, and live on broiled fish, vegetables, and water. If we smoke, we should stop—no ifs, ands, or buts.

      Sure, it would be nice if we were more rational and clearheaded about our “should”s. Unfortunately, we’re not. How else do you explain why millions of gym memberships go unused or why people risk their own and others’ lives to write a text message while they’re driving or why…(put your favorite example here)?

      

      THIS IS WHERE behavioral economics enters the picture. In this field, we don’t assume that people are perfectly sensible, calculating machines. Instead, we observe how people actually behave, and quite often our observations lead us to the conclusion that human beings are irrational.

      To be sure, there is a great deal to be learned from rational economics, but some of its assumptions—that people always make the best decisions, that mistakes are less likely when the decisions involve a lot of money, and that the market is self-correcting—can clearly lead to disastrous consequences.

      To get a clearer idea of how dangerous it can be to assume perfect rationality, think about driving. Transportation, like the financial markets, is a man-made system, and we don’t need to look very far to see other people making terrible and costly mistakes (due to another aspect of our biased worldview, it takes a bit more effort to see our own errors). СКАЧАТЬ