Many people have told me that the way I see the world is unusual.People make various decisions in their daily life.In my more than two decades of research career, I have never tired of figuring out the real (rather than the ones people take for granted) factors that affect these decisions, and this exploration has brought me endless pleasure. We often secretly resolve to diet and exercise, but the moment we see the dessert cart approaching, our resolution disappears without a trace.Do you know why? Sometimes we go shopping with great enthusiasm, and we buy a lot of things, but we don't need them at home.Why is this?

When we have a headache, the aspirin we buy for 5 cents doesn't work, but the aspirin we buy for 50 cents does.Why? Ask employees to recite the Ten Commandments of the Bible before work, and everyone will be more honest, at least when they have just finished memorizing.If this is not done, dishonesty abounds.what about this?In other words, why might honor and shame norms reduce workplace dishonesty? After reading this book you will know the answers to these questions, and many others.These questions relate to your personal life, your professional life, and the way you view the world.Knowing the answer to the aspirin question above, for example, is not only relevant to how you choose your drug, but it can also be used to look at one of the most important issues facing our society as a whole—the cost and effectiveness of health care.Knowing that the Ten Commandments of the Bible can effectively reduce dishonesty can give us some inspiration and help us avoid the next incident similar to Enron.Understanding the psychological mechanism of impulsive eating can help you understand other forms of impulsive decision-making in your life—and understand why the well-known truth of saving for a rainy day is so difficult to implement.

It is my hope that this book will help you to fundamentally rethink what keeps you and others around you alive.I hope to do this by presenting a wide range of experimental results and anecdotes - many of them interesting.Once you see that certain mistakes occur systematically, and why you make them over and over again, I think you will begin to learn how to avoid them. But before I tell you about my research on eating, shopping, love, money, procrastination, beer, honesty, and other areas of life—which are eccentric, generally useful, and eye-catching (and sometimes hilarious)— —I think I should first tell you about my alternative world view, which is the original intention of my writing this book.Unfortunately, what brought me into this field was a not-so-fun and not-funny accident many years ago.

It should have been a normal Friday afternoon in the life of an 18-year-old Israeli teenager.However, unforeseen circumstances and disasters fell from the sky. In just a few seconds, everything changed irreversibly.A large spotlight (the kind used on the battlefield) exploded and I suffered third-degree burns on 70% of my body. For the next 3 years I was forced to live in a hospital with bandages all over my body.Later, when he occasionally appeared in public, he also wore special synthetic fiber tights and a mask on his head, looking like a bad-looking Spider-Man.Not being able to participate in the daily activities of my friends and family, I felt socially isolated, so I started to observe the behaviors that used to make up my daily activities like a bystander.Like a person from a different culture (or planet), I began to reflect on the purposes of various actions, both mine and others.For example, I'm trying to figure out why I love this girl and not another; why my routine is set according to the doctor's comfort level and not mine; why I prefer rock climbing to history; why I I used to care a lot about what people thought of me; but what I think about most is what drives people's actions in my life.

During my three years in the hospital, I experienced all kinds of pain.In between physical therapy and surgery, I have a lot of time for reflection.During these long years, the greatest daily suffering always ended with the end of the "soaking treatment".The so-called "soaking treatment" is to soak the whole body in a disinfectant solution once a day, then remove the bandage and scrape off the necrotic tissue on the skin.When the skin is intact, it will only hurt a little when it comes into contact with the disinfectant, and the bandage can usually be removed smoothly.But if there is only a little skin left or no skin at all, like my severe burn, the bandage directly sticks to the flesh, and when it is stimulated by the disinfectant, the heart-piercing pain cannot be described in words.

Earlier in the burn unit, I talked with the nurses who gave me "soak therapy" every day to learn about their treatment methods and steps.The nurses used the usual method, uncovering a bandage and tearing it off quickly, so as to minimize the duration of my severe pain.It took about an hour to remove all the bandages by tearing them one by one.After that, a layer of ointment was applied to the body, a new bandage was put on, and the next day everything was the same. I soon learned that the nurses' rationale for doing this was that a quick jerk off the bandage, which does cause a momentary burst of pain, is better than taking it off bit by bit, because it doesn't hurt as much as it does. It will be relieved, but the patient's pain time will be prolonged, and the patient's pain will increase in general.The nurses also came to the conclusion that there is no difference between starting from the most painful part and then gradually dealing with the lighter part, and starting from the least painful part and then going to the heaviest part.

Since I suffered from the pain of the bandage removal process, I cannot agree with their theories (their theories and practices have never been scientifically tested).Moreover, their theories simply do not take into account the patient's perspective: the patient's inner fear while waiting for treatment, the patient's difficulty coping with varying degrees of pain for a long time, the patient's ignorance of when the pain starts and when it subsides, After a long period of pain he was comforted by no one to remind him when the pain would lessen and go away.In the helpless position I was in at the time, I couldn't do anything about it.

As soon as I got out of the hospital (and of course I had to go back to the hospital from time to time for surgery and treatment for the next five years) I went to Tel Aviv University.One class I took in my first semester profoundly changed my perspective on research and largely defined my future.This is the physiology of the human brain taught by Professor Hanan Frenk.Apart from the fascinating lecture material on human brain activity that Professor Frenk presented in class, what struck me the most was his attitude towards questioning and different opinions.Many times I presented my different interpretations of his research conclusions in class or in his office, and he always replied that my argument is indeed a possibility (it may not seem to be true, but it is a possibility after all), and I was asked to use an experimental approach to find out how it differs from conventional theories.

It is not easy to complete such an experiment, but science is a series of painstaking experiments. All participants, including college freshmen like me, can find alternative theories as long as they find experimental methods to test theories. This belief opened up for me. A whole new world.Once I went to Professor Frenke's office and presented a theory of how a certain stage of epilepsy develops, including the idea of ​​how it might be tested in mice. Professor Frenke was very supportive of this idea. In the next 3 months, I operated on about 50 mice, implanted catheters in their spinal cords, and injected different substances to increase and decrease the probability of epileptic seizures.I had a practical difficulty with this method of experimentation—the movement of the hands was restricted by the burns, so it was very difficult to operate on mice.Luckily, my best friend - Ron Weisberg (a staunch vegan and animal lover) - begrudgingly agreed to spend a few weekends with me in the lab to help me with the surgery - If ever there was anything that could truly test a friendship, this would be it.

The experimental results proved me wrong, but this did not dampen my enthusiasm.Anyway, I learned something related to my theory.Even when my theories are wrong, I know with absolute certainty what is wrong.I have always had many questions about how things develop and how people behave. Now I have a new understanding-we can study anything we are interested in, and science provides us with means and opportunities. This understanding attracts me into The field of study of human behavior. Using these new tools, I initially focused my efforts primarily on exploring our experience of pain.For obvious reasons, the pain that patients experience for extended periods of time during treatments like "soaking" is what I'm most concerned about.Is it possible to relieve these pains?Over the next few years, I carried out a series of experiments on myself, friends, and volunteers—using hot and cold water, the physical pain of pressure and loud noises, the psychological pain of losing money in stock trading, and so on— Come find out.

After the experiment, I realized that the nurses in the burn unit are kind and generous people (yes, there is one exception), they are very experienced in "soaking treatment" and removing bandages, but in terms of how to minimize the suffering of patients But there is no correct guiding theory.I don't understand how they could be so wrong with so much experience.I knew these nurses well enough to know that their actions were not motivated by malice, stupidity or lack of professionalism.Instead, they were poisoned by an inherent prejudice about the suffering of their patients, and it was clear that their extensive experience could not change this prejudice. With these considerations in mind, I was very excited to return to the burn unit one morning to detail the results of my experiments, which I hoped would change the way nurses remove bandages.I told the nurses and doctors that, in fact, the low-intensity pain treatment takes longer, but the patient feels less pain than the high-intensity, short-term approach.In other words, I would have suffered a lot less if they had taken off my bandages slowly instead of yanking them off quickly. The nurses were genuinely surprised by the conclusions of my experiment, but what surprised me equally was what my favorite nurse Eddie said.She admits that there was not enough understanding of this in the past, and that the treatment method should be improved.But she also suggested that research on the pain caused by "soaking therapy" should also take into account the psychological pain caused by the patient's screaming in pain.She explained that perhaps it would have been more understandable if the nurses, in order to shorten their own psychological torment (I did often detect the inner anguish in their expressions), resorted to quick bandage tearing.But in the end, we still agreed that the operation method should be improved, and some nurses have since taken my advice. As far as I know, my recommendations have not caused many hospitals to change the way bandages are removed, but this incident made a special impression on me.If those nurses who are experienced and caring for patients cannot correctly understand the real situation of patients, others may also misunderstand the consequences of their actions and make wrong decisions.I decided to broaden my research beyond pain to another class of cases—why people make the same mistakes over and over with little to learn from. Everyone is irrational, and this book is to take you on a journey of exploration and explore all aspects of irrational performance.The discipline to which this research topic belongs is called behavioral economics. Behavioral economics is a relatively new discipline, having evolved out of some areas of psychology and economics.It led me to study everything from our reluctance to save for old age to the sluggishness of our minds when we're sexually aroused.I'm trying to figure out not just behavior, but the decision-making process behind our behavior—yours, mine, and everyone else's.Before going on, I want to briefly explain what behavioral economics is about and how it differs from traditional economics.We start with a short line from Shakespeare: What a marvelous piece of work man is!How noble is reason!How vast is talent!How precise and astonishing are the descriptions and deeds!Act, how like an angel!Inspiration, how like a god!The essence of all things, the primate of all beings. —Hamlet, Act II, Scene II The most fundamental views about human nature, commonly shared by economists, policy makers, laypeople, and ordinary people alike, are reflected in this passage from Shakespeare.Of course, this view is largely correct.It's amazing what our brains and bodies are capable of.We can see the ball thrown from a distance, we can instantly calculate its trajectory and momentum, and we can move our body and arms to catch it.We can learn new languages ​​easily, especially young children.We can master chess.We can remember the faces of thousands of people without confusion.We can create music, literature, craft, and art—everything, the list goes on. Shakespeare was not alone in admiring the human brain.In fact, we know ourselves no differently than Shakespeare described us (although we do recognize that our neighbors, spouses, bosses often fall short of these standards).In science, these assumptions about perfect human reasoning are written into economics.In economics, this fundamental idea is called "rationality," and it provides the basis for economic theory, economic forecasts, and policy recommendations. From this perspective, as far as our belief in human rationality is concerned, we are all economists.I’m not saying that each of us can intuitively create complex game-theoretic models or understand the General Axiom of Revealed Preference (GARP), but that our fundamental beliefs about human nature are the same as those that underlie economics.In this book, when I refer to the rational economic model, I mean the basic assumption that most economists, and many of us, make about human nature—the simple and compelling idea that we can make the right decisions . While awe of human ability is legitimate, it is one thing to feel admiration and quite another to believe that our reasoning abilities are flawless.In fact, this book is about human irrationality—the gap between us and perfection.I believe that such discussions are very important to find out who we really are, and can also benefit us in reality.A deep understanding of irrationality is important to our day-to-day behavior and decisions, and to understanding the design of our environment and the choices it presents to us. I further observed that we are not just irrational, but predictably irrational—our irrationality happens in the same way over and over again.Whether we are consumers, business people, or policy makers, understanding how our irrationality can be predicted provides a starting point for us to improve our decision-making and our way of life. Which brings me to the real "friction" (as Shakespeare might have called it) between traditional economics and behavioral economics.Traditional economics assumes that people are rational—an assumption that implies that we can calculate the value of all the choices we face in our daily lives and choose the best one.What happens when we make mistakes and do irrational things?Here, traditional economics also has the answer: "market forces" will come to us and quickly pull us back to the correct and rational path.In fact, it is on these assumptions that generations of economists since Adam Smith have drawn far-reaching and all-encompassing conclusions, from taxation to health care policy to the pricing of goods and services. But, as you will see from this book, we are far less rational than traditional economic theory assumes.Not only that, our irrational behavior is not random and unconscious, but systematic.Since we repeat it over and over, it's predictable.Wouldn't it be logical, then, to revise traditional economics away from naive psychology (which often fails to stand up to reasoning, introspection, and, above all, experimental testing)?This is exactly what the nascent field of behavioral economics—and this book is a small part of—is trying to achieve. As you will see, each chapter of this book is based on several experiments that I have conducted over the years with distinguished colleagues (I have included a short list of my extraordinary collaborators at the back of the book).Why do experiments?Life is complex, with so many forces acting upon us at the same time, that complexity makes it difficult for us to figure out which of these forces shape our behavior and how.For social scientists, experiments are like microscopes and flashlights, which help us slow down human behavior, break it down into individual shots, extract each force individually, zoom in, and observe carefully, allowing us to directly and unmistakably Detect the driving forces behind our actions. If the results of the experiment are limited by the specific circumstances, its value is also limited.However, I want you to view these experiments as providing insights into our thoughts and decisions—not just in a particular experimental setting, but, by extrapolation, into many other settings in our lives. In each chapter, I further deduce the experimental results to other environments, trying to describe the relationship between their connotation and life, work, public policy and other aspects.Of course, the association I deduced is only part of it.To gain real value from this, and from social science in general, it is even more important for the reader to take a moment to think about how the principles of human behavior identified in the experiments apply to your own life.I suggest that you pause after each chapter to consider how the principles revealed in the experiments can make or break you in life, and more importantly, with your newfound understanding of human nature, you how to change your behavior.This is where we really want to explore. Let's start this journey of discovery.