Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior »

Ori Brafman is coauthor of The Starfish and the Spider and is a renowned organizational expert who regularly speaks before Fortune 500, governmental, and military audiences. A graduate of Stanford Business School, he lives in San Francisco.
 
Rom Brafman holds a Ph.D. in psychology and has taught university courses in personality and personal growth. His current research interests focus on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. He has a private practice in Palo Alto, California.

A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think.

Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.

Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect” (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us).

Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.

Preface     1
A little house on the Tel Aviv prairie
Asbestos and open-heart surgery
Ignoring the O-ring
Diagnosing the wrong patient
Where psychology and business collide
Anatomy of an Accident     9
Taking off at Tenerife
The oversensitive egg shoppers
The lure of the flat rate
Would you like insurance with that?
So long, Martha's Vineyard
The Swamp of Commitment     25
Playing not to lose
Fun-n-Gun
Only the Gators walked out alive
The {dollar}204 twenty-dollar bill
The end of the Great Society
"We don't even know where the tunnel is"
The Hobbit and the Missing Link     41
The real-life Indiana Jones
The hunt for the missing link
The Stradivarius on the subway
What's in a five-cent hot dog, anyway?
Homer Simpson and Piltdown Man
Can a discount drink decrease IQ?
Shakespeare was wrong
A paleontological lineup
Michael Jordan and the First-Date Interview     65
The curse of the low draft pick
The "cold" professor
What lovesick college freshmen have in common with HR managers
When a pretty face equals a higher interest rate
The "mirror, mirror" effect
The Joe Friday solution
The Bipolar Epidemic and the Chameleon Effect     89
A psychiatric outbreak
Sugar pills and Prozac
Tricking Israeli army commanders
How to sound beautiful
How old do you feel?
The love bridge
In France, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth     111
Who wants to trick a millionaire?
Splitting the pie
Sentimental cardealers
The talking cure for felons and venture capitalists
Russian justice
The rational Machiguenga
Compensation and Cocaine     131
Switzerland's toxic conundrum
The GMAT rebels
The power of the pleasure center
Hijacking altruism
Fast times at "Commie High"
The anticipation factor
Dissenting Justice     149
The Supreme Court conference
Peer pressure and Coke-bottle glasses
Ferris Bueller and the blocker
"We are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes"
The captain is not God
Not just thinking out loud
Justice has been served
Epilogue     169
Swimming with the riptide
The power of the long view
Zen economics
Propositional thinking
One man's trash is one woman's masterpiece
A cable guy, a banker, and a pharmaceutical rep
The real devil's advocate
Acknowledgments     183
Notes     187
Index     201