I think Robert Trivers is right in his theory of self-deception; if he were not, our job as advertisers would be much easier than it is. We could just ask people why they did things or whether they would buy them, and they would reply honestly: ‘No I wouldn’t normally pay $4.65 for a coffee, but if you put a fancy green logo on a paper cup so I cou

The alchemy of this book’s title is the science of knowing what economists are wrong about. The trick to being an alchemist lies not in understanding universal laws, but in spotting the many instances where those laws do not apply.

Whether we use logic or psycho-logic depends on whether we want to solve the problem or to simply to be seen to be trying to solve the problem.

Sometimes human behaviour that seems nonsensical is really non-sensical

where science hopelessly misled us was that it imbued in all of us the idea that you can’t create something out of nothing.

The reason for this is that with one person we look for conformity, but with ten people we look for complementarity.

in some cases, our conscious and unconscious decision-making coincide:

‘If economics isn’t behavioural, I don’t know what the hell is.’

The three principal modern forms of media consumption device, the laptop/desktop computer, the tablet and the mobile phone, are also products of the human form. Of the millions of hypothetical possibilities* there are, effectively, three comfortable modes for the human body: 1) standing up, 2) lying down and 3) sitting upright. The three devices wi