Put it on Your Pop Psych BookshelfNovember 13, 2008 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.
Challenge to assumption of rationalityOctober 16, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Well Written and Easy to UnderstandOctober 15, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Great content, but is there better treatment of the subject elsewhere?September 23, 2008 2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
You do not start to swaySeptember 15, 2008 1 out of 5 found this review helpful
I believed that this book would have come up with something new. But most of their examples was rather old and you have probably read about them somewhere else.
