Authors answer the age-old question: 'What was I thinking?'

Brothers Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman followed different paths in life, but they decided to collaborate on a book when they realized that Ori, with his MBA, and Rom, with a Ph.D. in psychology, kept running into the same dynamic puzzle through their work: What makes smart people make irrational decisions? In "Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior," the brothers Brafman attempt to explore several of the psychological forces that derail rational thinking. Some of the questions they address include: How do these forces creep up on us? When are we most vulnerable to them? How do they affect our careers, businesses, personal relationships? When do they put our finances, or even our lives, at risk? And why don't we realize when we're getting swayed?

At the movie theater, you visit the concession stand and order a medium popcorn and Coke. The smiling teen behind the counter says that for 50 cents more, you can get a large popcorn with a free refill. Although you've never before felt the need for a popcorn refill, you hesitate.

Hey, it's only 50 cents, and the movie might be a long one. You go for the large popcorn. You interview two candidates for a job and ask the standard-issue questions — "Where do you see yourself in five years? What would you say is your biggest flaw?" Both give standard-issue replies. Both candidates have similar resumes and neither is a standout.

But one reminds you of your favorite cousin Tim — the same smile, the same lively wit. Rather than intensify your search, you hire the Tim clone. You are mulling over cell phone plans. Should you get the 1,500 minute plan, or the unlimited calling plan? You have never gone over 1,500 minutes in a month but if you do, you can't imagine paying 25 cents a minute! You decide to pay a little more and go for the unlimited plan.

In all three of the above examples, you've been swayed. Brothers Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman followed different paths in life, but they decided to collaborate on a book when they realized that Ori, with his MBA, and Rom, with a Ph.D. in psychology, kept running into the same dynamic puzzle through their work: What makes smart people make irrational decisions?

In "Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior," the brothers Brafman attempt to explore several of the psychological forces that derail rational thinking. Some of the questions they address include: How do these forces creep up on us? When are we most vulnerable to them? How do they affect our careers, businesses, personal relationships? When do they put our finances, or even our lives, at risk? And why don't we realize when we're getting swayed?

Loss aversion can be costly

The swayed behaviors presented by the Brafmans range from relatively minor examples (such as the cell phone plan selection above) to horrific tales in which hundreds of lives were lost. Among the latter is the Tenerife disaster in March 1977. The pilot of KLM Flight 4805, en route from Amsterdam to the Canary Islands, was diverted to the tiny island of Tenerife due to a bomb threat at the destination airport.

While awaiting clearance on the tarmac, a series of missteps and bad weather resulted in the KLM pilot taking off without full clearance and crashing into another aircraft, Pan Am 1736. All 234 passengers and 14 crew members in the KLM plane were killed. 326 passengers and nine crew members aboard the Pan Am flight perished. What the authors find amazing is that the KLM pilot, Capt. Jacob Van Zanten, was among the most experienced pilots in the world, with numerous safety citations.

He had led countless safety courses for other pilots. However, the fact is that the Dutch airline KLM had, at the time, a spotless record for on-time landings and take-offs. One magazine ad featuring the smiling Capt. Van Zanten proclaimed: "KLM: from the people who made punctuality possible." Needless to say, the captain was under considerable pressure at Tenerife.

Using information from various accounts, the authors conclude that Van Zanten may well have caused the crash due to a number of sway factors, chief among them "loss aversion." Loss aversion causes us to engage in irrational behavior when we perceive potential losses, and the bigger the stakes, the higher the risks we are likely to take to avoid those losses, the Brafmans state.

The swamp of commitment and other pitfalls

In another chapter, "The Swamp of Commitment," we find that past success using certain strategies reinforces the likelihood of our using the same strategy over and over, even when common sense tells us another way might be more successful in a new situation. The authors delve into the Vietnam morass and President Lyndon Johnson's dilemma to illustrate the danger of committed thinking.

While LBJ postponed a decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, the situation grew alarmingly worse, with casualties mounting and his popularity at home plummeting. And yet, the worse things got, the more optimistic the president's speeches sounded. "When looking a potential loss in the face, we hope against hope that everything will turn out okay," the book states.

"In fact, if you listen more closely to LBJ's speeches, the exuberance, the determination, and, for that matter, the entire approach start to sound eerily familiar. LBJ's message, and even the specific words he used to describe Vietnam, bear an uncanny resemblance to George W. Bush's remarks about Iraq." The book goes on to describe additional "sways," including.

• The Love Effect — in experiments, volunteers consistently give better-looking people higher marks for intelligence and personality.
• Diagnosis Bias — when we brand or label people, they tend to take on the characteristics of the diagnosis.
• Reward vs. Altruism — Ironically, people who perform actions from purely altruistic motives tend to lose enthusiasm when a system of rewards is instituted.

We're only human

"Living in a time when we can predict hurricanes, treat diseases with complex medical interventions, map the universe, and reap the benefits of systemized business approaches, it's easy to forget that under the surface we humans are still influenced by irrational psychological forces that can undermine a logical perspective on the world around us," the authors conclude.

The fact is, all of us are swayed at times by factors that have nothing to do with logic or reason It is only by recognizing and understanding the hidden world of sways that we can hope to weaken their influence and curb their power over our thinking and their lives."

Like most books, "Sway" features critical praise from various sources on the jacket. In addition, the attentive reader will spot the following: *AUTHORS' DISCLAIMER: If you decide to buy this book because of endorsements [such as this], you just got swayed. One of the psychological forces you ll read about in Sway is our tendency to place a higher value on opinions from people in positions of prominence, power, or authority. (But you should still buy the book.)

Bottom Line:

Some of the most common psychological forces that influence irrational behavior:

• Aversion to loss
• Commitment
• The Love Effect
• Diagnosis Bias
• Incentive vs. Altruism