Book Review of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

 Want to make good decisions? Talk to other people who have been in similar situations and read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
Ariely does a great job of describing ten years of experimental results from his team's research into the irrational behavior of people with regards to economic decisions. There are nuggets here to be gained in basic human behavior that are directly applicable to negotiation. There is a section on comparison that makes it pretty clear how you should buy a house in order to ensure that you get what you want rather than what is just the slightly better of those shown to you. His research indicates that this relativity is constant across all choices we make even including our choice of life partners.
The second chapter establishes the concept of arbitrary coherence whereby once people consider a certain price for an item, that price becomes established in our minds and influences future prices. As a Logitech employee, I was pleased to see Ariely use a Logitech Cordless keyboard to show that we could sell at well above the current price, if only we could get people to first think of the number 100 before their purchase.
There are countless examples in this book that can assist in understanding what shapes our decisions. As a leader in the role of a decision maker, this learning is key to ensuring one is making the right decisions and resisting the irrational.