Today, I just finished an awesome book, Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely. Prof. Ariely, MIT Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics, describes many ways in which we predictably and systematically violate the usual “rational actor” assumptions of classical economics. He shows examples from his research demonstrating how arousal, desire for uniqueness [or conformity], temptation, social norms, price, and distance from cash all can lead us to make irrational decisions.
I loved this read, and am still trying to think of good ways to understand the implications of our irrational decision-making for environmental outcomes. I am also curious about the implications of irrationality for urban development. The main lessons from the book is that we often allow our judgment to be influenced by “irrelevant influences from the external environment.”
I am most interested in these findings because they say something quite unsettling about our ability to make decisions that promote sustainability. All of the examples Prof. Ariely describes are decisions with which the study subjects are quite familiar (e.g., beer sampling, whether or not to wear a condom, cheating on a test, etc.). What happens when the decision context is too immense to permit a similar familiarity? If we are prone to systematic irrationality when faced with familiar decisions, surely the complexity of sustainability obfuscates the decisions of even the most lucid individuals.
Does predictable irrationality mean we will never solve our most important problems of climate and natural resource over-extraction, social inequities and injustice, and economic unfairness?