Predictably Irrational Position Paper with Research
Essay : Predictably Irrational Position Paper with Research
Your last take-home assignment gives you the opportunity to bring together in a single essay the various skills and rhetorical strategies we have practiced this semester. You will be writing a position paper on Predictably Irrational that will give you the opportunity to practice summarizing, analyzing, defining, considering causation, evaluating, and arguing. You will also need to pursue outside research to support your ideas. This is an important assignment, so begin early and ask questions as they come up.
Overview
In a New York Times book review of Predictably Irrational, author David Berreby notes that "Ariely is not out to overthrow rationality. Instead, he and his fellow social scientists want to replace the ‘rational economic man’ model with one that more accurately describes the real laws that drive human choices." This new model shows us to be not measured in our thinking but erratic, not smart decision makers but easily swayed by outside conditions and influences. We make irrational choices, according to Ariely, but we make them in predictable ways — and he suggests that revealing those patterns may help us improve our decision-making processes.
Topic
Choose a chapter from Predictably Irrational to investigate more deeply. You will be developing a position on Ariely’s claim in the chapter (and by extension, his thesis in the book). In the essay, you will need to define Ariely’s term "predictably irrational" as you understand it, summarize his research experiments and findings in the chapter, evaluate the degree to which his findings are convincing, and finally offer additional outside evidence to support your evaluation (i.e., evidence that helps support his claim or that reveals his claim to be potentially dubious, somewhat misleading, or even seriously flawed). You may find that while you accept Ariely’s experimental methods and findings, you object to his reflections at the end of the chapter (that’s where he says what he thinks the results mean in terms of human behavior and offers suggestions for improving ourselves and our society). Conversely, you may discover that the conclusions make sense to you while the methodology is troublesome. Or you may find both experimental methods and findings flawed. Any of these positions is valid and worth developing into an essay.
While you are welcome to use the chapter you prepared for your group presentation, you are not required to do so and should feel free to explore any chapter in the book, including a chapter which was not assigned to any group. You should also feel free to develop your own little research experiment (or repeat one of his) to test the author’s claims. While a small sample set is typically not considered scientifically valid, for the purposes of our writing class, I’ll accept a subject pool as small as 5. (I know all the scientists in the class will shudder, but hey, we’re practicing writing here. I’m leaving the research training to others!)
A final requirement for this essay is a research component. You must use at least eight outside sources, citing these sources properly in your essay using MLA style. The last page of your paper will consist of a “Works Cited” page that lists each source accurately. The only parameters for your sources are that you include: 1) at least one quote or paraphrase from an expert in the field other than Ariely; 2) at least one relevant research study from outside the book; and 3) at least one quote from a current journal, newspaper, or magazine article. Be sure to look at the Teacher’s Guide included in the additional research tools; it includes links to a number of academic articles that could prove useful. (To get to those links, click on the image of the graph at the bottom of the introduction to Week 15.)
http://danariely.com/ (the author’s website)
http://files.harpercollins.com/OMM/PredictablyIrrationalTG.html
(includes links to some potentially useful academic papers)
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