Predictably Irrational - the hidden forces that shape our decisions

Dan Ariely has written an excellent book on human behavior - Predictably Irrational.
This books researches the many cases where we behave irrational -- and Dan exposes why this irrational behavior is "predictable".

I specially enjoyed reading the part about social and professional costs and why social and professional things cannot be mixed; why people will do things for free but not when they are offered a small compensation instead. Interesting.

This book is similar to the book "Influence: the psychology of human persuasion" by Dr Cialdini. I would rate Influence better of the two, as it seemed more scientific and had a clearer chain of thought. In Predictably Irrational, there are quite a few parts, specially in the chapters in the beginning, that I felt that the author was not really scientific but was pushing through his personal opinions. This isn't expected from an author with such credentials as of Dan Ariely. But the later chapters do appear more scientific, with information about control cases, etc - exactly what I would expect throughout any book which delves into human behavior.

Overall, I think this book is definitely worth reading. It contains important lessons on pricing, expectations, influence of arousal, etc.