Of course I snapped this book off the shelf after reading the title. I’ve been trying to figure out why people (read: me) who are supposedly intelligent sometimes do the stupidest things! After reading Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior I think I may finally understand it…now the challenge is how to change that behavior. The authors, brothers Ori and Rom Brafman have some suggestions that just may work!

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior is a fascinating book. I’ll bet the title alone will hit a lot of people personally as it did me. The other thing that hit me as I read Sway is the notion that I am not alone in my sometimes irrational thinking! I mean, what a relief to discover that!

Right off the bat it is clear that the objective of the Brafman brothers is not just to explain the whys of this phenomenon through insightful and often chilling examples, but also to try and show us a way to reform our thinking before we do something rash and irrational. While I doubt that we will always be able to apply the breaks before driving off the cliff, I do believe there is some hope as the Brafmans put it:

…by better understanding the seductive pull of these forces, we’ll be less likely to fall victim to them in the future. (page 7)

The journey from rational to irrational, or this idea of “sway”, as described by the authors is mesmerizing. Many of the examples given, such as why would an experience airline captain recognized for a stellar safety record suddenly decide to throw all the rules out of the window and take off in a dense fog without tower clearance? It doesn’t seem possible that something of this magnitude could actually happen, and yet it did – killing tens of people.

Other examples were pulled seemingly from my own daily life. Like why would I make a dangerous move into oncoming traffic, risking my life and the lives of others, to get ahead of a slow driver and save myself less than five minutes on the road? I confess: I’ve done it.

According to Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, there are three basic conditions that arise to “sway” us from sensible decision-making to irrational behavior:

• Loss averstion – quite simply, a fear of losing something…time, money, etc.
• Force of commitment – a big one in my book, this is our inability to change course even if the road we’re on is clearly destined for failure. We’ve committed, we can’t stop now. (Stay the course…sound familiar?)
• Value attribution - a quick mental shortcut to determine what is worthy of our attention and what is not. This is rampant for many of us into today’s sensory overloaded society.

One of the strongest solutions offered by Ori and Rom is to always look at the long term implications of every decision before plunging ahead:

Our natural tendancy to avoid the pain of loss is most likely to distort our thinking when we place too much emphasis on short-term goals. When we adopt the long view, on the other hand, immediate potential losses don’t seem as menacing.

That is a powerful notion.

I highly recommend this book. If you want to know more about the human mind and behavior, there is some excellent information here. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior is a good way to start a conversation with ourselves: Why do I do what I do? How can I bring more order and less chaos to my thinking? As I stated early, we are all bombarded with information nearly 24 hours a day. A reminder to step back, look long term, and think again may just save our lives and the lives of others.