A fascinating book that shows us how often what we think are rational choices are, in fact, often influenced or determined by other, irrational factors. That irrational behavior is predictable, which marketeers often use to steer our choices. Everything in the book is based on scientific research, and the chapters are filled to the brim with descriptions of experiments the author conducted with his fellow researchers.

Some of the things I learned:
- how often what we are willing to pay for things depends on what the other offers we are presented with, even though the actual value may not correspond to the value we perceive.
- the placebo effect, and how it can have real benefits, but also confronts us with moral dilemmas: should a doctor prescribe medication he or she knows is ineffective if the patient really seems to experience an improvement from taking it?
- how people often will cheat (a bit) if they can, but when they are reminded of a moral code (like the Ten Commandments or an oath they signed), the cheating completely disappears.
- how peer pressure impacts our choices in a much bigger way then we would like to admit.

I love books like this, because they help you understand your own behavior and challenge you to ask yourself why you do the things you do. This book will help you recognize the many ways in which marketing uses the predictability of our irrational choices to try to influence our consumption behavior. Recommended!