| Irrationality |  | Author: Stuart Sutherland
Publisher: Pinter & Martin Ltd.
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
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Seller: aphrohead_books
Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 1,289
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd Revised edition
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 1905177070
Dewey Decimal Number: 150
EAN: 9781905177073
Publication Date: January 10, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Irrational beliefs and behaviour are virtually universal. This title draws on research to examine why we are irrational, the different types of irrationality, the damage it does us, and the possible cures. It also argues that we could significantly reduce irrationality and its effects - but only if we recognize just how irrational we really are.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
nice book June 19, 2010
Black rabbit (London UK)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I recieved it very quick. (The first time I haven't got my order but Amazon resent the new one for me. I'm very impressed with the service.) The quality of the book is good. Just a bit fold at the edge of the cover but it's not thing.
 Statistician's Wet Dream June 14, 2010
Realist (London, England)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Could have been an interesting book, instead it was a book of statistics amassed from psychology studies that I found at least 70% boring. Endless pages of other peoples psychology studies.
At the end of each chapter there is a neat bullet point summary of what the author thinks you should have gleaned from that chapter. I think I would have learned as little by reading solely the bullet point summaries.
Not feeling it.
 Pithy in its delivery June 12, 2010
A.N.Other
I'm not sure I understand reviews of this book that suggest the author puts things succinctly. Some of his delivery is so long-winded and overly flowery that it makes reading some parts a distinct chore. A subject such as irrationality could have been covered with much more verve and humour but this is instead a very dry text with little more than a one line quip in the bullet point morals of the story at the end of each chapter. Overall, this makes the book a rather tedious and boring read when it could be a lot more engaging. I really don't know where the comments on the back about it being a "consistently lively" read come from.
If you like really dry text books, you may get something out of this. If you like your academia to come with a bit of personality, you could well find yourself bored rigid and wondering if, like the person who sits to the very end of a rubbish film having paid for it, whether it's worth reading this book to the very end or not. After about 85%, I elected to stop irrationally reading in the hope that it might get better, and cut my losses.
Interesting subject, but the book fell short on the delivery. May 13, 2010
Sofia Romualdo (Porto, Portugal)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book in a nutshell: humans can be very irrational at times.
I know. Common knowledge, right? However, the book goes on to try to explore, explain and offer solutions to the various forms of human irrationality, always relying on studies to back up the conclusions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it just fell short of what it was trying to do.
Be warned. This book was written in 1992, and it shows. I noticed right away some very strange factual errors that, at times, by light of new evidence that has since been gathered, completely defeat the points being given by the author. I noticed this particularly with medical studies - having been in medical school myself I spotted the, at times, glaring mistakes, which didn't impress me at all. I guess I was using one of the irrational thought processes he described - the "halo effect", which when applied to this, means that when I saw that he was completely wrong in some thing he vehemently defended, it made me look at the rest of his book in a negative light. It probably means this review is tainted by irrationality as well. I'll take my chances.
I wish I had marked the exact quotes to back up what I'm saying. I recall at least that at some point in the book he goes on and on about how doctors were wrong to think that blood cholesterol levels had anything to do with what you eat, because a study had proven they had no correlation. Yeah. This reminded me of all the smokers who will quote one study that says that smoking is not bad for you at all and has nothing to do with lung cancer. Let's ignore the rest of the studies who say otherwise, then.
I also had a problem with the tone of this book. It was way too patronizing, and the author seemed to have personal vendettas against some members of society, namely feminists, members of the medical profession, and psychologists who do social experiments.
There were some positive aspects to it, and I found a few pearls of wisdom, but overall, the book was simply not worth it.
OK, but there must be better books out there May 12, 2010
P. Drury (Scotland)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book on the strengths of the many positive reviews here, but was disappointed. For me the book fails to adequately address the question of what it means to be 'rational' or 'irrational'. Human behaviour is complex, and the goals behind our decision making are not always obvious. The book address this in the introduction, but then proceeds to ignore it through the body of the work and interprets experimental results as though people's decision making behaviour reduces to a simple mathematical equation.
The book does not have a coherent thread, and strings together a very long list of experimental results. Most of these are so covered so lightly that they appear almost anecdotal, leaving the reader with no option but to trust the authors assertion that they either support or refute 'irrationality'.
It's not a bad book, I trust the author's integrity and the content level is beyond the 'change your life in ten days' books on the self-help shelf, but I hope there are better books out there and I'll just have to keep looking to find one.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
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