Sublime

When in conflict, people rarely act from a rational, logical center.

THE SCIENCE OF THE DEAL

the article described three ways in which people made judgments when they didn’t know the answer for sure. The names the authors had given these—representativeness, availability, anchoring—were at once weird and seductive.

In Asch’s study: Solomon Asch’s classic study about the pressure to conform to a group was published in Groups, Leadership, and Men, edited by Harold Guetzkow (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951). Asch’s chapter, titled “Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgment,” appears on pages 177–90.

often by trying to change the incentives that Doers face.

By far the best theory for describing the principles of our irrational decisions is something called Prospect Theory. Created in 1979 by the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, prospect theory describes how people choose between options that involve risk, like in a negotiation. The theory argues that people are drawn to sure things over

“I identified someone on the project team who was an ok performer and who the team really liked. Then I waited. When he said something in a project team meeting that sounded a little bit like he was objecting, I yelled, screamed, and threw him out of the room and off the project team in front of everyone.” William went on to explain “The team was