The science behind our decisions

[MR_Y]

Thinking, fast and slow.
Daniel Khaneman.

A bit of a heavy read, but well worth getting into.
Best to read it slow, take in each chapter and reflect.

I would recommend this to people who deal with difficult stakeholders (be it your spouse, co-workers or senior management) and people in marketing or sales.

It will also help you become more critical of cherry-picked statistics (e.g. COVID19 stats or crime stats) and how these can nudge you into thinking one way or the other.

More details here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

"The central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking, starting with Kahneman's own research on loss aversion. From framing choices to people's tendency to replace a difficult question with one which is easy to answer, the book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgement"

 

[SrC]

Thank you for the recommendation, what a fantastic book.

Definitely a heavy read, changes are really frame breaking.

 

[MR_Y]

Bringing it to the world of cars, here are some decision science tricks that car dealerships use:

1. Buy a car at Prime - 5% (or even 0%) if you finance with them. This is bull - what they do is not give you the full upfront discount on the list price and massage the interest to make it seem that you are saving on interest. If you finance with your own bank, you would get that discount upfront and could likely (need to do the maths) pay less in Rand and cents interest, since the amount financed is significantly less, even if the interest rate is slightly higher.

2. Finance with the dealership and save R100k+ on the list price. This is just a reverse of the above. The capital amount financed is less, but they hit you with a massive interest rate (more than what your bank would charge). Eagle Ford/Ford Credit do this often.

3. Slapping on a premium badge on a piece of crap and charging premium prices (X-Class, 218i GC, etc...), since the badge blinds most people's logic centres.

4. Never to be repeated offer. Act now to not miss out. Make people act on impulse, given the illusion of time constraint.

 

[SubLoaded]

For those that would prefer the audiobook as background

 

[trevor_e36m]

should be a good read , ive recently commited to reading a book a month