Rationality: what it is, why it seems scarce and why it matters

Rationality: what it is, why it seems scarce and why it matters Jul, 2021 Video Behavioural Economics and Marketing Read time: If rationality leads to better choices in our personal and public lives — and is the ultimate drive of social justice and moral progress — why does so much of human behaviour seem to defy logic? Harvard professor Steven Pinker shares insights from his latest book. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? It's a thorny and very pressing issue that Harvard professor Steven Pinker tackles in his book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. In this video presentation, he addresses some of the forces that lead us to act irrationally, including self-interest, group dynamics and sectarian solidarity. He describes a prominent study that showed that a basic regression analysis — the kind you might learn to carry out in a Statistics 101 course — outperforms the most sophisticated intuition when predicting when an accused criminal is most likely to skip bail. It's just one example of how we can fail when trusting our gut instincts over a more rational approach to decision making. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of many awards for his research, teaching, and books, he has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and named one of Time‘s 100 Most Influential People and one of Foreign Policy‘s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. His books include The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now. Dilip Soman is a Canada research chair in behavioural science and economics, and serves as a director of the Behavioural Economics in Action Research Centre at Rotman [BEAR]. His research is in the area of behavioural science and its applications to consumer wellbeing, marketing and policy. He is the author of The Last Mile [University of Toronto Press] and teaches a massive open online course (MOOC) BE101X: Behavioural Economics in Action on EdX. Keywords: behavioural economics behavioural science consumer behaviour corporate social responsibility psychology social media social movements

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If rationality leads to better choices in our personal and public lives — and is the ultimate drive of social justice and moral progress — why does so much of human behaviour seem to defy logic? Harvard professor Steven Pinker shares insights from his latest book.

Steven Pinker, Dilip Soman

How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? It's a thorny and very pressing issue that Harvard professor Steven Pinker tackles in his book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.

In this video presentation, he addresses some of the forces that lead us to act irrationally, including self-interest, group dynamics and sectarian solidarity. He describes a prominent study that showed that a basic regression analysis — the kind you might learn to carry out in a Statistics 101 course — outperforms the most sophisticated intuition when predicting when an accused criminal is most likely to skip bail.

It's just one example of how we can fail when trusting our gut instincts over a more rational approach to decision making.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of many awards for his research, teaching, and books, he has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and named one of Time‘s 100 Most Influential People and one of Foreign Policy‘s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. His books include The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and Enlightenment Now.

Dilip Soman is a Canada research chair in behavioural science and economics, and serves as a director of the Behavioural Economics in Action Research Centre at Rotman [BEAR]. His research is in the area of behavioural science and its applications to consumer wellbeing, marketing and policy. He is the author of The Last Mile [University of Toronto Press] and teaches a massive open online course (MOOC) BE101X: Behavioural Economics in Action on EdX.

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