Predictably Irrational: Our Effort to Understand Human Behavior: Recent Episodes
Ross Miller
The human brain works in mysterious ways, and not always in the ways we think it does. We do strange things for the unknown reasons and we do common things often without thought. As a result, we are often unaware of how impulsive and predictable we can be. We often fail to think on the reasons that are behind our actions.
In this podcast, students from a Japanese university explore their own understanding of these issues and hopefully, provide the listener with some insight into how our brains work and how to be more aware of our own thinking.
In this episode, Riko and Ryota talked about irrationality, social norms and market norms, and logical fallacies. Human beings tend to compare, they use social norms and market norms in different purposes, and they will obey themselves if there are some praises for them. Human beings sometimes use these how to think or behavior by mistake, which may cause some serios problems. However, there are some solutions to solve the problems and we will indicate them. We hope you enjoy this final episode of Season 2.
Ryoki, Kanta, and Kairi are talking about Straw-man Fallacy, Hasty Generalization, Anecdotal Evidence Fallacy, and Burden of Proof Fallacy. We will explain each fallacy and explain how to avoid it. We conducted our study in one of the four fallacies: "Have you ever asked your parents to buy something by lying to them, saying that someone else had it too?'' We will explain based on" Is there anything that happens?'' In this podcast, you will be able to hear and learn about the fallacy that is lurking around you.
Daito, Kyoka, Maina and Kohei explain the four human irrationalities: Base Rate Fallacy, Cognitive Dissonance, Commitment Bias, and Correlation/Causation Fallacy. This content is related to the contradictions between behavior and thought, as well as the handling of information. By understanding these, you can comprehend and confront aspects of yourself that you may not have been aware of before. This knowledge enables self-reflection, providing insights into one's own characteristics.
In this episode, Haruka, Mayu, Shun, and Ibuki explore the captivating biases of the placebo effect, false memory, blind spot bias, and confirmation bias. Delving into Dan Ariely's 'Predictably Irrational,' we dissect these intriguing cognitive quirks, shedding light on their impact on decision-making. A captivating experiment reveals the subtle manifestations of these biases. Join us for a conclusion that emphasizes the importance of recognizing and navigating these cognitive intricacies.
Mona, Mylinh and Moe introduce cognitive biases and logical fallacies in the following sequence, Availability Heuristic, Barnum Effect, Automation Bias, and Groupthink. We start with the introduction of our podcast. For each of them, we talked about definitions, examples, how we can apply in real life and so on. We conduct a questionnaire on psychological phenomenon of bias, Groupthink and we talked about what questions we have set and what we learned from it in our talk. The last part is the conclusion of it and the purpose for our talk.
Masami, Haruto, Yuuta, and Momiji talk about several chapters from Predictably Irrational. The first topic is about anchoring. We will discuss how the information initially presented can influence subsequent judgments and decisions. The next topic is about zero cost. We will talk about people's psychology and situations when they see the words zero = free. Finally, we will discuss how emotions change human behavior. We will discuss how human emotions influence decision-making and judgment.
Takayasu, Harue, and Naoto help us understand confirmation bias. The way to counter confirmation bias is to listen to a third party's opinion. That person also has preconceived notions, but hearing an opinion that is different from yours can help you think about things from a different perspective. What you need to know about cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias is to train your mind. By doing so, you will not be involved in an accident.
Honomi, Wakana, and Naoki talk about their experiences with and surveys about our habits of making choices.
Suzuha, Momoka, and Jinichiro talk about the high price ownership. It means feeling the disadvantages of losing what you currently have and changing the environment are greater than the benefits of gaining new things. It related psychology of attachment to one's belongings. We conducted a survey and summarized what we learned from the results. The high price ownership can prevent us from making our lives better We think understanding about the high price ownership is help your life. Our podcast explains this reason.
Katsuya, Takumi, and Tomoki discuss Chapter 3 of Predictably Irrational: The Cost of 0 Cost.
Kohaku, Anna, and Honoka discuss four prejudices and fallacies. These four-affect society. Egocentric bias leads individuals to overvalue their own contributions. Gender biases perpetuate stereotypes and unfair expectations. The framing effect influences decision-making based on presentation, and the bandwagon effect fosters conformity. Together, these biases shape societal norms and behaviors, impacting perspectives, choices, and reinforcing ingrained prejudices. Recognizing and addressing these biases is crucial for fostering a more equitable and informed society.
Do you know that you fall into various biases in your daily life? Ayane, Aina, and Yuzu speak of one effect and fallacy and two biases. Some of them are influenced by much of our everyday personal lives. These are difficult to try to get out of. We will also present some useful information for our lives on how to avoid falling into them. We hope these will help in our daily life.
This episode talks about the biases that makes humans predictably irrational. Those biases are the Negativity Bias, the Loss Aversion Bias, the Ostrich Effect, and lastly the Self-Serving Bias. With this episode, Allena, Angel, Jennifer, and Wynne hope that the listeners are well informed of these biases and know how to conquer them. These biases are lurking in the shadows, sneaking around and waiting for the chance to attack, causing you to react irrationally.
Thu, Wito, Owen and Rock give a summary of Chapter 8:Keeping Doors open. After a briefsummary of the contents of the chapter we give our personal opinions on saidchapter. We then go on to give a explantion and analysis of our survey that weconducted related to us as foreign students coming to Japan, concerning thedecision itself. Finally, we talk about our ownexperience, followed by our conclusion. We hope this helps all who listen be a little less predictablyirrational.
See the companion video here.
Our brains don't always work the way we think they do. In this episode, Honoka, Koki and Mei explain about the Anchoring Bias, the Availability Heuristic, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Confirmation Bias. In addition to explanations, they also show some examples they made to illustrate these topics.
With the premier episode of Season 2, Fikri, Gautam, and Williams talk about baises that we often encounter in our life. We might already know the how baises work but sometimes we don't know the name. In this discussion, we will focus on 4 baises: Hallo Effect, Hindsight Bais, Just World Hypothesis, and the last one will be the Ikea Effect.
We hope that this podcast will help you to be a little bit more rational.
In this chapter, "The Power of Price," we discuss how price affects the effects we perceive. We also explain what he says about the placebo effect.
Our episode covers the following points:
・Introduction
・The psychological effect that price has
・Expensive drugs vs Inexpensive drugs
~ Are expensive drugs more effective than cheap drugs? ~
・Manami's Placebo Experience
・What is a placebo?
・The placebo surgery
・Conclusion
As an introduction, we talk about a few examples of why there are different opinions about the same scene.Then, a scientist tested whether the predictions would influence subsequent views of the event. Specifically, they asked whether a pub patron's prediction of the taste of a certain beer would affect his or her perception of that beer. Finally, we conducted an experiment to see if and to what extent the experience changes as knowledge is acquired. This story summarizes the relationship between knowledge and taste.
Our group's PodCast is about Keeping doors open.
Everyone tends to want to keep the possibility to do anything when people are lost in ways to do anything. Especially, our PodCast uses original experiment data. The experiment is the question "You were invited to play outdoors wearing a costume on a day, but an excellent party may be held by your friends the day. What would you do? ". The result is as same as I wrote first, everyone decided to keep their schedule open until the party is rel held.
In other situations, which is a better product, which is a better course for my future... It is natural but it is very meaningless because when they are lost, they waste time, so we have to manage our choice.
The reason is explained in more detail in our PodCast.
In this podcast episode, we talk about the contents of the 7th chapter of the book "Predictably Irrational" and our thoughts about it. This chapter explains how we value the things we own more that the things we do not own. To prove this idea, we did a survey that we talked about in this episode. We've also found that we focus on potential loss and not potential gain, think others see things from our perspective, and can feel ownership for a thing even before we own it.
Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute, or past their deadline. Procrastination is a common phenomenon that chronically affects around 20% of adults, including lawyers, business executives, and college professors. Furthermore, it’s particularly prevalent among certain populations, such as college students, around 50% of whom procrastinate chronically. In this episode, we are going to talk about procrastination and Self-control based on the “Predictably Irrational” book by Dan Ariely. We will talk mainly about Student’s procrastination with our pieces of advice.
After an introduction into the world of social norms and historical norms, we give examples from the chapter: survey of the National Association of Retired Persons and the example of the daycare center in Israel. We then talk about a survey we conducted related to this issue. Understanding the cost of social norms is an important to understanding our relationships.
We talked about "The cost of zero cost." Zero makes us happy, but it can also be a problem. That is, something you had no intention of buying at all becomes surprisingly attractive once it is FREE.
We think that what is being provided is very valuable. This may be because people are essentially afraid of losses. If you choose free, you don't have to worry about losing anything in sight. However, if you choose something that is not free, the risk remains that you may have made the wrong choice. So, if you were asked which you would choose, you would choose the free one.
After we introduce this chapter, we go over some questions and experiments and talk about:
- Anchoring
- Price of jewelry
- Building a value
- Milk and wine
We conclude with a summary.
We are three international students living and studying in Japan (Hannah -Vietnam, Uchral - Mongolia, and Stacey -New Zealand). In this episode, we will discuss our thoughts and opinions on relativity and how what we learned from the book relates to our own lives and personal experiences. We discuss the pitfalls of comparison and how in modern times it has become easier to compare everything in our lives from the products we buy to our jobs and even our lifestyles. Through this, we highlight the importance of relativity and how we can use it to our advantage.
This is the premier episode of podcast that looks at critical thinking and the issues discussed in Dan Ariely's book: Predictably Irrational. This podcast is a project for Advanced English 2: Critical Thinking, a class held in the fall of 2022 at a Japanese university. This episode explains our rationale behind the is podcast. In addition to a list of the upcoming episodes, there are also greetings from the students who will be presenting the upcoming content.
Thanks for listening!
Cover Art by Mio K.