The Irrational Bundle: Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

The Irrational Bundle: Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty Reviews

• 
  Amy

  This extremely large collection took me about three months to complete. It was an excellent resource and weight of causing you to consider how we as human beings think and rationalize our decisions. I really hope to find more of the bands books in the future. I wish I could say there was only one facet of this three book series that was the most informative or the most interesting, but honestly it all was in its own way. I think I found the irrationality of how we are motivated and what motivates others to be probably the most useful in my career of education.
  
  That being said, I found the authors personal story very inspiring. But what I found the most refreshing is the fact that he refers to his experiences without much of an emotional reaction to it that would make the reader feel any sort of pity for him. Definitely empathy, some sympathy, but no pity. I thought that was probably a very tough rope to walk.
  
  I highly recommend this author. He was knowledgeable, interesting, and extremely entertaining. I did need to read this book and small snippets to avoid being overwhelmed with information. But it was awesome!
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  Matthias Pfaff

  Love it, good read for (neo) liberals who argue against regulatory role of state to put borders to selfish corporate activities at the cost of consumers, who can easily be manipulated to not act rational at all, this is what Dan Ariely proves with quite some nice research.
• 
  JayElle

  I got this as an ebook bundle. They were combined into one book and I read them consecutively. I read a fiction book before starting the next book, though.
  
  First book - 5/5, enjoyable and interesting, if a bit padded out. Very consistent with the TED talks.
  Second book - 3/5, interesting, but did repeat things from the first book.
  Third book - 1/5, mostly repeats from the first and second, got bored and quit 2/3 through (a couple of sections were repeats from books 1 AND 2)
  
  I enjoy Dan Ariely's talks and did enjoy the first book. The concept of predictable irrationality is interesting to me, and something I can use in my work. I don't recommend this bundle, though. Hindsight being 20:20, I'd have just bought the first book, and then the second one a few months later so the repeats weren't so fresh. You could probably read any 2 books from this bundle and get 90% of the insights from all three.
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  Natalía Papadopoúlou

  I’ll be honest about this, hah no I won’t! I started this book many years ago, only to read few experiments that were related to my interests. It’s a really big bundle of scientific experiments and besides knowledge on why we are so irrational, I took away two things: 1. Test everything, don’t rely on intuition alone, 2. It’s possible to break our own biases and stretch our “rationality”. I wish I could recommend this book to anyone that acts irrational (and then wonders why the other ones are to blame). Science couldn’t be more accessible than that, go for it!
• 
  Junaid Noor

  One of the best bundles ever
  
  Thank you Amazon for selling these three books as a bundle. Loved Dan’s work on human behaviour and his real life experiments. A very good book for those starting to explore Behavioural Sciences.
• 
  Imani

  Too verbose. Many of the arguments could be a lot more concise... was a bit of a pain to read. Felt like the arguments were over-simplified and kind of “dumbed down” for a lay audience : /
• 
  Jan Cullinane

  Love the area of behavioral economics, and in fact just gave a talk about this subject on Thursday: "Secrets of Decision-Making: for Retirement and for Life."
  
  And, Ariely is a good guy, too. I emailed him to ask him if he's found gender differences in his behavioral economics research, and he replied to my email (said his researh hasn't found any gender differences).
  
  So, I recommend all three of these books, and think highly of the author as well.
  
  Jan Cullinane,
  author, AARP's The Single Woman's Guide to Retirement (John Wiley & Sons)
  
  
  
  The Single Woman's Guide to Retirement
• 
  Jozef

  Dit drieluik is absoluut de moeite waard voor iedereen die geïnteresseerd is in psychologie en hoe een wetenschappelijk experiment in de psychologie wordt opgesteld.
  Eén sterretje minder echter omdat zo'n e-boek toch wel een aantal belangrijke nadelen heeft ten opzichte van het papieren boek. Zo zitten er verschillende voetnota's in, maar de uitgever heeft niet de moeite genomen om een link achter de referentie te steken zodat je in je e-reader naar de voetnoot kan springen en dan terugkeren. En zelf bladeren gaat toch niet zoals met papier in zo'n e-reader.
• 
  James

  The books started getting a little repetitive towards the end, but then, they weren't intended to all be read most likely.
  
  I loved the whole series. There's a lot of situations where I could feel that a lot of the results the series laid out were directly reflected in my personal experiences. It allowed what were previously only hunches to evolve into a semi grasped understanding of the underlying behaviors that caused certain actions.
• 
  Georgina Allen

  An excellent and entertaining read about our irrational behaviours. Very much enjoyed reading it and it was a great accompaniment to the coursera course on Irrational Behaviour, however, I did find that there was quite a bit of overlap and repetition between the three books hence not the full five stars.
• 
  Colleen

  This took me a realllllly long time to read as I can never read too much in one sitting before getting a bit overwhelmed. As always, Ariely is funny, fascinating and full of mind-numbing information that makes you really think twice about how rational you are.
• 
  JDK1962

  Very good, even if a tad repetitive across the bundle. An excellent introduction to behavioral economics, especially the first volume of the three. The last volume does a nice job of dismantling the traditional economic explanation of crime (as simply a cost/benefit calculation).
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  Soledad Acirihca

  Great!
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  Milda Tylaite

  an example how research should be presented to non-academics. the second and third books started to feel a bit repetitive, however - but were interesting nevertheless.
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  Kenny Oyama

  Not my favorite Ariely book (Honest Truth About Dishonesty)
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  Patricia Duran

  Mostly back-to-back experiment findings. It is full of others’ studies and the author keeps coming back to his favorite test subjects: college frat guys and beer.
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  John Hays

  Interesting use of sociological data to expose our mental self-deceptions and logical errors. It will make me more cognizant of the logical risks of certain situations.