Irrationality: the Enemy Within


Notes on Stuart Sutherland (1994) Irrationality: the Enemy Within. Penguin paperback (ISBN: 0140167269), reissued 2007 as "Irrationality" by Pinter and Martin (ISBN: 978-1-905177-07-3)

 

Up: Books for Non-Specialists

 

In terms of making a great breadth of research easy to understand with a variety of examples and applications, this is still the best non-technical introduction to the topic of cognitive biases. There are books covering newer research (such as Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own) but none is as ambitious and accessible as this.

 

It looks at judgement and decision-making in many contexts, from military tactics to medicine and from job interviews to the paranormal. It relies heavily on scientific research -  there are many elegant descriptions of psychological experiments - yet the technical details are kept out of the main text to make it easy for a non-specialist reader, and much of the text deals with real-life instances of bias. 324 footnotes point to the book's scientific basis.

 

If it has a flaw, it's on the philosophical side rather than the psychological side. In order to judge that some behaviour is irrational, you need a clear standard of rationality and an understanding of why that is the best choice. Sutherland is good at succinctly explaining the normative standards, but some of his examples are not as clear-cut as he makes them out.

 

Outline

 

1. Introduction

 

2. The Wrong Impression

 

3. Obedience

 

4. Conformity

 

5. In-groups and Out-groups

 

6. Organisational Folly

 

7. Misplaced Consistency

 

8. Misuse of Rewards and Punishments

9. Drive and Emotion

 

10. Ignoring the Evidence

 

11. Distorting the Evidence

 

12. Making the Wrong Connections

 

13. Mistaken Connections in Medicine

 

14. Mistaking the Cause

 

15. Misinterpreting the Evidence

 

16. Inconsistent Decisions and Bad Bets

 

17. Overconfidence

 

18. Risks

 

19. False Inferences

 

20. The Failure of Intuition

 

21. Utility

 

22. The Paranormal

Biases that promote belief in the paranormal:

 

23. Causes, Cures and Costs

Five basic causes of irrationality

Education in statistical concepts, in economics or in psychology seems to counter some biases.