NYT review of “The Upside”
The New York Times Sunday Book Review, just published a review of the Upside of Irrationality.
In general I think that the review is very good, but there is one point that made me wonder (and of course I focused on the one point that was less positive in the review).
One of the main differences between “The Upside” and PI is that this time around I wrote in a much more personal way about some of my experiences and how they got me thinking differently about different aspects of life (dating, adaptation, pain etc). It was very hard to write this way, and while writing I kept on wondering if this is a good approach to write or not. The reviewer from the NYT reaction was that I was overly personal in my descriptions, and maybe she was correct…
Either way it would be nice to find out the reaction to this approach — is writing in a more personal way, useful or distracting? I would love to get any feedback on this.
Thanks
Irrationally yours
Dan
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
Dear Dan,
I am about halfway through “The Upside” and I truly appreciate the personal style of this book. It makes me feel like I am having a really great conversation with you, through which I am getting to hear about the cool experiments you’ve done as well as your own experiences.
For my two cents, I think that if you are comfortable maintaining this level of personal dialogue with your readers, you should — it is lovely having this conversation with you.
Best,
Tara.
hi Dan,
I haven’t been able to read your book yet (I live in Holland) but in general, I’m a huge fan of (personal) cases and even more the personal drive to something.
Your story isn’t the standard ‘I didn’t feel like going on like this so I started doing things differently and wrote a book’. At all. Getting burned to the level that you’ve experienced is, I think, high on anyones fear top-10 list. So I guess you might get into certain peoples comfort zones.
Again, I unfortunally haven’t read your book yet, so I don’t know if I’m touching base here
Either way it would be nice to find out the reaction to this approach — is writing in a more personal way, useful or distracting? I would love to get any feedback on this.
I just finished “The Upside” and will write in more detail about it on my book blog in the not-too-distant future, but I tend to find some of the personal stuff more distracting — mostly when it becomes repetitive. For example, although I very much sympathize with your burn experience as a teenager, I think you might have used it too much in “The Upside,” even though that was obviously a formative and important influence on your life.
That being said, I also very much enjoyed some of your examples as providing the impetus for your research — like the time a senior professor’s disrespect for your class led you to work more on emotions. In fact, that example probably led me to remember more about your work because I remember things in story more than I remember them in purely informational form. I’m a grad student in English lit, so maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. One footnote on page 184 served a similar purpose, as when you said: “I often had a strong feeling that when others observed me, the y saw my injury but also inferred that my appearance was correlated with diminished intelligence. As a consequence, it was very important to me to demonstrate that my mind still functioned in the same way it had before my accident.”
The Audi story also resonated with such an extent that I used it as a subsidiary example in a blog post on Deadlines are Everything, and How To Be Amazing. I think one reason it resonated is because I’ve just had to deal with car dealerships, as described in my post, and the experience left me fuming about the lousy experience. I suspect many others will identify with that experience, and it seems like identification helps with both empathy and retention of ideas.
As I write this, I find that I’m not able to come up with a lot of examples of how I might have found writing in a more personal way distracting, even though that was my initial reaction.
I use a program named Devonthink Pro to organize notes on books. I took about 17 or 18 quotes or ideas from “The Upside,” including the one above, and in looking through them now I’d guess that about four of those are primarily personal stories in nature, while the rest tend to be informational. That may be because I’m usually looking out for stuff that could be useful for my own research. Still, if I primarily took notes on material that isn’t related to more personal writing, but some of the parts I like best are jokes, like this about mojitos:
At this point, I’m not sure my comment is tremendously useful to you, but those are some of my thoughts.
Of course your irrationally asking for personal thoughts in comments instead of a (slightly) more accurate poll or a (very) accurate scientific survey.
I got my copy of your new book in the mail on Thursday. To prepare for it, I re-read PI and true, the writing style is quite different. I’m halfway through “The Upside” now and in my opinion the way you write now is better than ever. I very much enjoy reading it and your more personal writing style makes the points and examples much more efficient. Keep on writing this way!
I haven’t had a chance to read the new book yet (am saving it for an upcoming 12-hour train ride to CT), but I am a fan of “personal” writing (and speaking). Especially since, as a grad student, my days are filled with reading journal articles (dry!). Being able to read about experiments, philosophies, ideas, etc… in a more informal and personal manner makes social science more fun and applicable to our everyday lives.
I’ll let you know if I change my mind after the train ride.
I believe that to the most part, it is a cultural issue. Has had this reviewer spent some years at a Kibbutz, she would have become much more comfortable with the style or at least appreciative.
This is one of these irrational criticism or perhaps an manifestation of the “nurse syndrome”
I was a fan of the personal touch. I enjoy sinking my teeth into data and just getting a sense of the raw, unadulterated facts… but everything snaps into focus for me when I can get a personal hook into it.
For example, it’s all well and good to read about studies done on revenge, and it’s fascinating to see what people do… but for me, that visceral thrill of seeing (reading?) someone get a (justly?) deserved comeuppance? That catharsis just drives the observations home even more. (And that’s just one case of many.)
tl;dr? I think the personal touches made the book special, and I don’t think you crossed a line into being too much so.
Dear Dan,
I still have not read the book. It should arrive in my mailbox in a week or so.. In any case since I could not wait I have read the sample available for the Kindle edition. From what I’ve read so far it was great to be able to learn more about who you are and how you addressed some of the issues in your life. Threfore, I really appreciated that you were able to write in this way.
I think you made a good choice to personalize this book. By knowing you, the reader can get the added value of having a human context into your thinking and approach, even your values, on this subject.
I have been a Dan fan, since the time we met while you were a professor from the Sloan Business School teaching at the MIT Media Lab and I was a rep of a corporate sponsor.
I believe the latest breakthrough in business, economics and life has been the recognition of a decision making process that takes into account our ability, as well as inability, to determine what options and trade-offs are available, and how it affects what we choose to do.
Thanks for being a source and catalyst for a very human approach to decision making.
What the reviewer actually said was “Ariely sometimes indulges too extensively in the minutiae of his autobiography.” I disagree. I believe the reflections on how and why experiments were conceived are some of the most engaging and enlightening aspects of the book.
Dan,
I’m about 3/4 way through “Upside” and don’t mind the personal stuff at all. I think it works very well in context with the experiments.
I didn’t find them distracting in the least, They fit in perfectly and some were very touching. As another commenter said, it was like getting to know you better. Bravo!
Namowal
Dan:
And you thought strangers started conversations with you like you’ve been friends for decades after PI? Ha! Your travels are sure to only get MORE interesting, more familiar, and perhaps even more fun.
The goal of writing is to enrich the reader. If your writing is homogeneous, then why should I read your book? I read your book because I like your style. I can think of two books off the top of my head that the author didn’t follow conventional wisdom that became best sellers. One of those book is the Black Swan and the other, The Girl Who Played With Fire. It’s your style that keeps readers wanting more.
I have only finished the introduction as I have exams to study for.. but the part that I read really connected with me on a deep level. you know, often over-generalized theories feel so distant and take a lot of work to be understood on a personal level. I think your style of writing gives the reader a very good insight about your thought process, which makes it easier to personalize the theories and apply them in practice.
I admire your approach to scientific discovery; and I’m personally very pleased with your writing style.
Dan,
It’s neither irrational nor counterintuitive to presume that everyone at Booksmith in SF enjoyed your talk as much as I did. Thank you.
If you’re truly interested in my books about motorcycles, they are “Art of the Chopper” volumes I and II; Bulfinch Press. They illustrate the first comprehensive collection of motorcycles created explicitly as contemporary art and are as much about the artists who create them. I recently curated the actual motorcycles in exhibitions at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and the Appleton Museum of Art. An international tour is in the works.
FYI, a chopper is a highly conceptual, hand-made motorcycle; a balance of flamboyance and minimalism; a convolution of form and function; a vehicle of self-expression. As far as motorcycles go, it is getting something wrong just right. My accompanying photographs offer a glimpse into a parallel universe populated by the high priests of horsepower, lane-splitting libertarians on the road to perdition with a consummate sense of style.
Hi, I heard your interview with Michael Krasne yesterday, and that whetted my appetite to read your work. Haven’t gotten the book yet, but I came across this website and did the quiz. I have to wonder if, at the end, your awarding me a score of “26-human!” (which has no units, no denominator, and no meaning other than that I’m in the middle of the Gaussian distribution) was a way of flattering me into buying the books, as suggested on the next page (with chapter recommendations.) Flattery – a presumably irrational form of persuasion which maybe was, maybe wasn’t mentioned in your books. Will see….
I loved the book, and very much appreciated how personal you got this time around. Having been through some painful injuries myself, and having to suddenly come to grips with reduced capabilities that will last the rest of my life, your stories gave me a greater appreciation of your character.
It might be worth doing an experiment to see if the “liking” effect for stories like this is strongest with people who have had injuries and painful recoveries, and “dislike” effect strongest for people who don’t
I’ve noticed that old retirees derive great pleasure from discussing injuries with one another.
Keep the personal stuff and be stuffy in academic texts! It’s a book for the rest of us isn’t it? Aren’t you trying to help us take advantage of all that lovely research….in our personal lives and in those spheres within which we have influence? (sadly(?) no domain influence in banking). A public speaking coach once video taped me telling how i met my husband and had me compare this to “how i came accross” when explaining something technical…Wow. the woman talking about her husband had you hanging on your seat, but the stuffy technical lady seemed to sound like those disembodied unintelligible “grown-up” voices from the peanut cartoons…rock on Dan. BTW I’m listening to UI on Audio (and while the book is not recorded in your voice… Simon Jones is British enough to be droll too, nice touch having the downloadable figures)
So our tired old ways of applying rules to exclude emotions in our writing have come into question .Do you think it may be that it is a spill over from our educational system?
Could it be that research to reveal new truth has to be written in 3rd person because the paradigm in education is that we are not allowed to include any Moods in our writing (which makes it in the first person)?
Could it be that Moods are deemed irrational and influenced by our perceptions with the next dose of adrenalin or dopamine? Could it be that in some cases when we are in this temporary mood that it may shadow our thoughts and render them false or irrational as you have maintained?
…. but then…it is not what we care about the most that motivates us …and is caring about something considered a dynamic mood?
Some believe this was started by Descartes who tried to separate our sole from the mind because of the political and religious factions in his day who wanted and worried about the control of the masses… it was coined the “Descartes Error” by Antonio Damasio in his book who maintains we must have emotions in our thoughts to make good decisions, it is the natural way our brains work… so perhaps the real error is we think that truth is truth and it is not contextual and therefore it can never change and our research paradigms cannot cope with ambiguity.
I’m part of the way through “Upside” now. I really love your personal style of writing, and think it’s very effective all around. Thank you for making this topic so interesting.
I liked the personal stuff, but that may be because I’m an MIT alum and I was naturally relating your stories to my own. I loved the bit about getting burned and still thinking of yourself as that attractive 18yo but also “changing” personality into more of a serious studier on a few levels:
1. I’ve had kind of a reverse trajectory, that I grew up as an ugly duckling but blossomed at MIT. In my head I’m still a geek even though I get attention from non-geeks now. I’d never thought about intellect and attractiveness as being negatively correlated, but it might be true.
2. I’d seen your TED talks and read PI and at some point (before hitting some anecdote about Sumi) casually wondered if you were on the market. I’m not sure if this means your work is that compelling, that your social skills completely make up for any physical difference, your burns are less noticeable than you think, or that I long ago compensated for my ugly duckling vision and don’t even focus on that. I think there’s issues of what’s rare and minimum standards – there are a lot of attractive people out there, but not too many smart, nice, people with good communication skills.
The personal approach was definitely more useful than distracting. It made the results resonate more in my mind and probably enhanced my memory of the concepts.