News & Reviews

Ori's economical analysis featured on ABC's Nightline.

Fast Company selects Sway as one of its top 10 books of 2008
−Fast Company
The pioneering work of Nobel Prize-winning economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has led to a number of books that consider rational and irrational behavior in a new light. The Brafman brothers tell the story of irrational behavior in business and life and how we can combat it with sharp anecdotes and a light touch. Don’t be swayed from the irresistible pull of the bookstore to check it out. View slideshow...

Where Fantasy Meets Reality
−Ylan Q. Mui
The problem with fear is that it makes us act irrationally, setting the stage for potentially explosive situations. For sellers, the first and often largest stumbling block is the price at which they list the house. Many recall what their homes could have fetched just three years ago. Even worse, some bought at that price and now face selling at a loss. That's when what behavioral economist Rom Brafman calls "loss aversion" begins to kick in. Brafman, a co-author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, explains the loss-aversion theory like this: The pain associated with a loss is greater in intensity than the joy derived from an equivalent gain. Read more...

D.I.Y. Disasters
−Beth Teitell
Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, attributes the desperation to the human tendency toward "loss aversion," and offers this explanation: "Once the color job goes bad, you've entered a situation where you're almost like a gambler sitting at a blackjack table. If you've lost $100, you'll do whatever you can to get back to even. Once you've dug yourself into a hole, ironically the tendency is to dig ourselves in even deeper financially. You are willing to spend even more to get back to where you were." Read more...

Failing Home Economics
−Penelope Green
A behavior called loss aversion tends to freeze consumers in place in one area even as spending in other areas remains unchecked. Mr. Brafman noted that many would-be travelers, rattled by the rise at the pump last summer, canceled their vacation plans while continuing to spend at home. Gas prices were up, on average, $2 a gallon, he said. “It seems like a substantial amount, but for a 600 mile trip, that amounts to $80 in savings. This could have been easily recouped by cutting out one trip to a restaurant.” Read more...

Winners Never Quit? Well, Yes, They Do
−Alina Tugend
Sometimes the desire not to quit surpasses all reason. Ori and Rom Brafman are brothers and the authors of the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior (Doubleday Business, 2008). “There is a huge amount of social and psychological forces keeping people from quitting,” Ori Brafman said. Read more...

Overcoming the 'Sway' in Professional Life
−Marci Alboher
Sway is a provocative new book about the psychological forces that lead us to disregard facts or logic and behave in surprisingly irrational ways. The book was written by two Israeli-born brothers, Ori Brafman, a serial entrepreneur and organizational behavior expert, and Rom Brafman, a practicing psychologist. Sway moves along swiftly, with each nugget of a chapter illustrating an aspect of the authors' premise. They use dramatic narratives like the story of an accomplished pilot who made a seemingly irrational decision that sent 584 passengers (and him) to their deaths or the Washington subway passengers who ignored the performance of a virtuoso violinist because they perceived him as a street musician. The Brafman brothers use the word "sway" as a catchall term for a collection of irrational impulses that can blindside us in our careers. I spoke to them about how these phenomena play out at work and how we can outsmart them. Read more...

Free to Choose, But Often Wrong
−David A. Shaywitz
Sway, by brothers Ori and Rom Brafman...offers a breezy introduction to the science of decision-making and shows the many ways in which logical thought can be subverted or "swayed." Loss aversion, for example, may explain why car rental companies persuade us to purchase gratuitous insurance or why flat-rate telephone plans are so popular even when they end up costing us more. Value attribution−transferring "value" signals from one thing to another−may explain why hot-dog sales at the Coney Island food stand of "Famous Nathan" Handwerker shot up when he recruited local doctors to shop there while wearing their white coats and stethoscopes. Procedural justice may be the reason why venture capitalists favor the entrepreneurs who communicate with them most; a willingness to observe the dictates of process is taken as a proxy for quality. Read more...

When Bad Urges Happen to Good People
We human beings can be very bad at making decisions objectively. (Witness the stock market on any day, especially the bad ones.) In a new book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, two brothers, Ori and Rom Brafman (Ori's an organizational expert; Rom's a psychologist), demystify what gets in the way of our otherwise clear thinking. Malcolm Gladwell fans will recognize the influence of The New Yorker scribe's The Tipping Point and Blink, but the brothers have produced a unique and compulsively readable look at unseen behavioral forces. −Jia Lynn Yang

Listen to Ori and Rom's interview on Public Radio's Tech Nation

Rational choice: follow Einstein or wear a tie?
−Richard Donkin
In a new book, Sway, The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour, the authors Ori and Rom Brafman outline a series of irrational behaviours that remind us just how often decisions are made not on sound reasoning but on emotional impulses that can have critical consequences. Read more...

 

Watch Ori's interview about Sway.

 

A veteran pilot ignores years of training, takes off without clearance, and slams into another plane. An NBA coach favors his first-round draft picks even if they play poorly. Why? Two brothers, a business consultant and a psychologist, explain why mistakes happen—and keep happening—thanks to common forms of irrationality easy to identify but tough to avoid. −Kirk Shinkle

Sometimes what we think we know to be true isn't and what we know to be untrue is. The Brafmans recount a number of situations in which people reacted one way despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary. It's not an uncommon occurrence, either. It might be a matter of inertia, avoiding a perception of weakness or the inability to revise one's opinion even when the facts change. There's also a reluctance to go against the crowd, as in The Emperor's New Clothes. Their book is a breezy yet extremely thoughtful and intelligent work, with implications that extend beyond business. Understanding how and why this occurs may help us avoid bad business decisions and perhaps even another phony war. −Richard Pachter

Economist Ori Brafman and his psychologist brother Rom explain why “the more there is on the line, the easier it is to get swept into an irrational decision.”The authors offer an accidental motto that ought to be engraved over every casino in the world, to say nothing of every stock exchange. Adding a page to the small but growing literature of behavioral economics, they examine these irrationalities. It makes sense that egg sales, for example, would be up around Easter and at the beginning of the month, when paychecks had been freshly deposited. It makes less sense that when egg prices drop a little, people buy more of them than they perhaps can eat, but when they rise by the same amount, people cut back on their consumption by two and a half times. “This feeling of dread over a price increase,” write the authors, “is disproportionate to the satisfaction you feel when you get a good deal.” In other words, we seem programmed to expect disappointment and to fight harder to avoid losing a buck than to earn one in the first place, messy matters that carry the reader into the deeper, more complicated recesses of the mind. Also, “we often ignore all evidence that contradicts what we want to believe.” Eureka! The Brafmans’ book probes less deeply into economic behavior than does Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational (2008), but it is richer psychologically, a worthy companion to Malcolm Gladwell at his best. One of those rare books that explains the obvious in ways that are not obvious at all. −Kirkus Reviews

Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan. It's the 1984 NBA draft and the Portland Trail Blazers choose a promising 7-footer over the future face of basketball. It's one of the great "what were they thinking?" coulda/woulda moments in sports history. But, as Sway informs us, the thought process that led to that decision may very well point to many of our own boneheaded shortcomings in business and everyday life. The Brafman Brothers--Ori, the coauthor of The Starfish and the Spider, and Rom, with a Ph.D. in Psychology−-team together their professional insights of behavior to outline the ways in which (and why) "we're much more prone to irrational behavior than we realize." Read more...

Why would a game-show audience intentionally mislead a contestant? And why shouldn't you pay your friend for a favor? Sway has the answers. In this engaging journey through the workings—and failings—of the mind, the Brafman brothers use captivating characters, from a violin virtuoso to a Florida football coach, to explain the forces that derail rational thinking and suggest how to avoid being swayed. Their stories of senselessness—including one about a Harvard business student who paid $204 for a $20 bill—are as fascinating as the lessons we learn from them. −Bianca Bosker

A Skimmer's Guide To the Latest Business Books - Sway
− Leigh Buchanan
The big idea: Authors Ori and Rom Brafman explore how forces such as fear of loss and reluctance to change often cause people to act against their best interests. The brothers team up effectively to bring together differing perspectives: Ori is an entrepreneur, and Rom is a psychologist. Read more...

Pounding heart? You may be in danger or in love
− Daphne Gordon
People are more likely to fall in love when they're scared, say brothers Ori and Rom Brafman in their new book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. Read more...