Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
- newspaper59
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Hudson Honeybone, '26
Our everyday life is ruled by invisible forces– not the spiritual or superstitious kind but the psychological. These psychological riptides consume and hurl us into an abyss of irrationality. These forces are the source of our impulsivity and utter stupidity. When retrospectively reflecting on a past action, it’s easy for us to curse our rash decisions: “What was I even thinking?” Chances are, you weren’t! Instead, you unwittingly fell victim to nature's most powerful form of hypnosis– one that drives us to commit great irrational follies. In Ori and Rom Brafman’s best selling book Sway, they investigate the strongest of these psychological underpinnings that have afflicted mankind since the cognitive revolution.
Loss Aversion & the Ever Present Appeal of “Breaking Even”:
Loss aversion is a psychological undercurrent that motivates us to go to irrational lengths to avoid potential loss– playing not to lose, essentially. You and I have fallen victim to loss aversion on many occasions, but it's perhaps best understood within the context of a poker match. Imagine this: after a dry run of poker cards, you’re now down 30 dollars. The threat of a potential loss looms, and you’ve zeroed in on recouping your losses and breaking even. For a more casual player, recovering that lost 30 will dominate your decision making and hinder your ability to make calculated poker bets. Instead of playing logically within your limits, you begin taking nonsensical risks to recoup your wallet. This is textbook loss aversion. In pursuit of breaking even, or playing not to lose, you’ve made impulsive decisions that often exacerbate your already disadvantageous circumstances.
Loss aversion often works in tandem with another psychological undercurrent called commitment, which you’re already familiar with but perhaps unaware of its sheer psychological potence. In the world of irrational behavior, commitment refers to the refusal to veer from a certain path once you’ve invested sizable time and resources. Commitment is at work everywhere; thus, it's no surprise that some of the strongest cases of commitment happen on campus. A student who has ever considered dropping a course has crossed paths with the gravity of such a commitment. Since the individual has already invested countless hours of studying and suffering into learning the content, dropping the course feels like a betrayal of that diligent effort– rendering it a “waste.” Moreover, dropping the course is a formal acknowledgement of failure, which may prove too damaging for the ego. The unattractiveness of wasted resources in conjunction with the unshakeable pride that comes with being human makes commitment the psychological riptide that it is.
A Discarded Masterpiece & the Power Of Value Attribution:
In 2003, New York resident Elizabeth Gibson noticed a piece of seemingly worthless artwork in the roadside trash bin, ready to head to the incinerator. Despite the unattractive circumstance, Gibson found the painting to be quite appealing and made the fateful decision to free it from the trash pile. Unbeknownst to her, Gibson had just salvaged a masterpiece of renowned Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that had been stolen and later discarded by the perpetrators. Gibson later auctioned the piece for 1 million US dollars.
Oblivious to its true value, thousands of New Yorkers ignored the piece as a worthless throw away; after all, it sat squarely in a rancid pile of New York waste. However, I can guarantee that those same passersby would’ve snatched the painting instantly if they had identified it as a free, 1 million dollar check. So, what prevented the New York pedestrians from recognizing the piece for its true artistic mastery? That would be the power of value attribution, or the tendency to evaluate the worth of someone or something based on perceived value informed by circumstances, rather than objective data.
Because the painting rested on a pile of garbage, passerby associated the work with garbage, thus stripping it of any artistic or cultural value. Value attribution compels us to evaluate the world around us based on circumstantial evidence rather than objectivity. We often evaluate something based on what it “looks like” rather than what it actually is or could be.
Value attribution – unlike the previous two undercurrents, which are solely a product of human nature – is a byproduct of social circumstance. We inherit our value scale from society: we are conditioned to value currency and likewise to depreciate intuition. Consequently, value attribution is dynamic, morphing over time as social norms continue to evolve.
Motivation and Reward: The Illusion of Monetary Incentives
In order to understand the complex relationship between motivation and reward, we must first investigate the neurology of such a decision. There are two regions of our brain responsible for evaluating whether a task is worthwhile. First is the nucleus accumbens, or our pleasure seeking instincts, which is triggered by things like sex, gambling, and money. The second is our “altruism center”, which is associated with the fulfillment experienced when contributing to the common good. These two centers of stimulation are mutually exclusive when assessing the appeal of a task. We are either drawn to a task because our altruism center classifies it as a good deed, or there is some sort of pleasure inducing reward that stimulates the nucleus accumbens. The forces of altruism and pleasure DO NOT work in tandem; head-to-head, the pleasure center always triumphs.
For example, if your friend asked you to tutor them for an upcoming test with no concrete reward, our altruism center fires. The simple prospect of helping a friend in need becomes the basis for our decision and is the determinant for fulfilling the task. However, the dynamic changes when a monetary reward is introduced. If that same friend tacked on a $5 reward for the tutoring session, the nucleus accumbens envelopes the decision making process. You begin evaluating the “worthwhileness” of the task solely by the quantity of money offered. You might feel insulted by the incentive, as you think to yourself that your time is far more valuable than a pesky 5 dollars. What’s interesting here, however, is that the altruistic reward and the monetary reward do not compound. Our brains do not interpret the task as an opportunity to earn money and contribute to a noble cause. Our brains are conditioned to ignore the altruistic reward in the presence of a pleasure-inducing alternative, crowning the nucleus accumbens the victor. This psychological phenomenon explains why a monetary incentive in some cases can actually sour a deal.
What To Do With This Information?
In the epilogue, the Brafmans provide the reader with strategies to avoid the perilous pull of psychological undercurrents like loss aversion, commitment, and value attribution. I simply cannot agree with this approach. Psychological sways are the hallmark feature of humanity. If my friends remained robotically composed during our poker runs, I might as well play against a computer. These psychological underpinnings add flavor to our lives. These “sways” are welcomed curveballs in a life that would otherwise be utterly monotonous. Humans curing psychological undercurrents is as ridiculous as a tortoise shedding its shell. Getting swept up in the moment is a part of being human, so I urge you to embrace it, instead of resisting it.
