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Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior |  | Authors: Ori Brafman, Rom Brafman
Publisher: Broadway Business
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.79
as of 3/13/2010 15:18 CST details
You Save: $6.21 (44%)
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Seller: any_book
Rating:  110 reviews
Sales Rank: 1175
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0385530609
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.92
EAN: 9780385530606
ASIN: 0385530609
Publication Date: June 2, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780385530606 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think.
Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.
Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect” (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us).
Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.
Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 110
 superficial and repetitive March 4, 2010
Celaque (Genoa, Italy)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
this was the most superficial and repetitive non-fiction book I've ever read - half a page in a weekend supplement would have sufficed for space, and better suited the style of the authors
 thoughtful perceptions of human behavior March 2, 2010
Michael D. O'connell (NEW YORK, NY)
If you want to know why people act so impulsively and irrationally I would reccommend reading this book
There are lots of startling brief stories that give glimpses of why humans think and act so irrationally at times.
Sometimes I laughed at how stupid some of the decisions people make with very little information.
These stories definately effected the way I think about people and situations in my own life.
I hope this effect is positive and durable. lol
 You get what you pay for February 25, 2010
James Taylor (San Jose, CA USA)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Yes this book is entertaining and I would have giving it three stars for being entertaining had the authors not left out so much information about the subjects they discuss like loss aversion. But all this book is, is just information reprinted by someone with a differnt name. You can learn so much more by reading a book about NLP, and when you read a book about NLP you will get all the information that was left out of this book, although it probably won't be as entertaining. So you can now choose spend 10-15 bucks on this book or spend 10 bucks at the movies and 5 bucks for popcorn for your entertainment. But don't read this book and think you will learn to sway another person's mind.
 loved this.. February 22, 2010
buddha18
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
funny and serious at the same time....and of course, very informative - i usually read inspirational books (latest was Live Like A Fruit fly - also on amazon) but i loved this book
There is a New Market for Popular Economics February 20, 2010
John G. Jazwiec (Chicago IL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Tipping Point and Freakonnomics proved there is a new market for popular economics. When a person I know, who does not like to read, told me these were his favorite books, I realized that a new book economy was forming.
The book "Sway" is the same kind of attempt to dumb down economics. I have a blog called [...] that is filled with debunking the myth of the rational investor. The fact that people act irrationally is not novel nor unique. There is plenty of academic reseach to suggest individuals act irrationally. We react irrationally because we are flawed - from ego, to fealings of "being left out" to our propensity to survive by chosing based on fear of a loss.
While this book, like Dan Brown's thrillers, mix history with a plotline, they are successful because 99.9% of people are lazy readers and instead of doing research come to conclusions by well written "aggregators".
While I would recommend this book to read on the beach or to pass time, I must say that the book covers little new ground. And their success is more troubling - we are "swayed" more from books like Swayed then reading pure research.
Has any reader taken the time to audit their reseach? Probably not and that is the most disturbing part of this new book economy.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 110
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