Everyday Irrationality

Robyn Dawes defines irrationality as adhering to beliefs that are inherently self-contradictory not just incorrect self-defeating or the basis of poor decisions. Such beliefs are unfortunately common. This book demonstrates how such irrationality results from ignoring obvious comparisons while instead falling into associational and story-based thinking. Strong emotion—or even insanity—is one reason for making automatic associations without comparison but as the author demonstrates a lot of everyday judgment unsupported professional claims and even social policy is based on the same kind of everyday irrationality.