The Upside of Irrationality summary

Living creatures aim to maximize rewards while minimizing effort. Although it may seem obvious, this notion is contradicted by the concept of contrafreeloading. The term, coined by animal psychologist Glen Jensen, describes the preference displayed by many animals – such as fish, birds and monkeys – to earn their food as a reward for performing a task rather than receiving it for nothing.

This observation can be applied to humans in the workplace, where the meaning found in work – not just the money earned by doing it – affects our willingness and motivation to do it.

How proud did you feel after assembling that IKEA bookcase by yourself? Pretty satisfied, right?

That’s because the amount of effort we put into a given task determines the pride we get from it. But we only need to exert a paltry amount of effort in order to feel pretty good about ourselves.

Are you a creature of habit, set in your ways, confident about your long-standing preferences? Well, you might be more flexible than you think.

The reality is, we humans have an extraordinary ability to adapt to almost anything. Every emotion we experience that leads us away from our normal state usually subsides with time, and we eventually bounce back to normality.

You probably know the adage “birds of a feather flock together.” This is particularly evident in the dating world, where beautiful people date each other, and the more aesthetically challenged of us date those with similar levels of attractiveness.

This phenomenon is known as assortative mating.

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Let’s first look at markets. Markets are hubs that allow people to find what they need while conserving time and effort. Take your local supermarket: it offers you everything you need in one convenient place, without having to traipse all over town to the butcher, the baker and so on.

Why is it that many of us wouldn’t think twice about lending money to a loved one, but don’t bat an eye when it comes to donating to relief efforts that help thousands of displaced or injured people after natural disasters or political upheaval?

More often than not, we’re moved to tears by a news report about a little girl that fell down a well, yet remain distant when we hear about the brutal murder of 800,000 Rwandans. It was actually Stalin who famously noted our irrationality toward tragedy when he said “One man’s death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic.”

Did you raise your voice the last time someone aggravated you? Here’s a good reason to resist the urge to blow up next time: even when short bursts of negative emotions fade, we may be developing a bad habit without even noticing it.

Imagine someone cuts you off in traffic on your way to work and you subsequently burst into a temper tantrum. The next time a similar situation occurs, it’s highly likely that you’ll have the exact same reaction. The reason for this is that we tend to look at ourselves in the past to determine how to act in the present moment. That is, in order to know what to do, we take cues from ourselves, just as we do from others. Our past behavior then turns into indications of what we should do next and we start to believe that we had a good reason for acting the way we did. This is known as self-herding.