Keeping to the straight and narrow

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

Sway is a slim, stylish book that is self-consciously part of a trend. Like Blink and Freakonomics, it looks at the science of decision-making, taking obscure academic studies and applying them to everyday life. It shares with those books the breezy, anecdotal style that should probably be called Gladwell-esque. But the one-word title that Sway bears most similarity to is Nudge, the latest publication from University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler.

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Along with the economist Daniel Kahneman, whose Nobel-prizewinning prospect theory is predictably referenced here, Thaler is the godfather of behavioural economics. This is hot stuff right now, as President Obama showed when he enlisted Thaler to plan his new stimulus package. So Sway comes along at a good time — hence perhaps its status as an ‘international bestseller’.

The central claim of behavioural economics is that it goes one better than normal economics by replacing the much-maligned ‘rational man’ with a more psychologically accurate figure. Sway is full of examples of behaviour that overturn the standard economic model, from oversensitive egg-shoppers to managers who pick the wrong candidate at interview. If only these individuals had known about the ‘sways’ influencing their behaviour, Ori and Rom Brafman argue, they would have been less likely to make mistakes: ‘By better understanding the seductive pull of these forces, we’ll be less likely to fall victim to them in future’.

The Brafman brothers are lively guides to the field, but their language is odd, to say the least. All too often, they seem to be working on the assumption that irrational equals bad, rational good. So sways ‘derail’ us; we are ‘vulnerable’ to them.