Predictably Irrational quotes

“Ariely opens with the observation that human valuations are not absolute.”

“Ariely's chapter argues that price is far more arbitrary than this picture suggests.”

“The shift across the zero boundary is not the same kind of price change as any other.”

“The chapter's central argument is that mixing the two is destructive — once money enters a social transaction, the social mode is hard to recover.”

“The shift is large enough that decisions made when calm cannot be relied upon to predict decisions made when aroused.”

“Ariely's argument is that procrastination is not a willpower failure but a structural feature of how humans discount future rewards relative to immediate costs.”

“The effect is consistent, well-replicated, and contradicts the rational-agent assumption that the value of an item is independent of who owns it.”

“Humans display a consistent reluctance to close options, even when the closed option is clearly inferior and keeping it open is costly.”

“Expectations shape experience to a degree that the rational-agent model does not predict.”

“The price effect is not a moral failing of consumers; it is a structural feature of how the brain integrates expectation into experience.”

“The lab experiment gave participants twenty math problems and ten minutes to solve as many as possible, with a payment per problem solved.”

“Ariely's experiments show that cheating with one step of indirection between the cheater and the money is dramatically higher than cheating directly with money.”