This short TED talk, by behavioural economist Dan Ariely, is a great piece of watching. His book Predictably Irrational is also a highly entertaining read. Especially the chapter on people continuing to rate the best beer as being the one with vinegar in it simply because it was in the expensive beer bottles. While the 'better' beer - the actual beer from the bottles - was rated lower. They also paid more for the beer and vinegar than for the 'real' beer. Thats from memory so don't quote me.
Ariely has a nice take on intuition. Basically the area of what do we do when your intuition and my intuition are at loggerheadds? Whose intuition is 'correct', or are either of them 'correct'? It takes us into the area of 'certaintiy'. According to Robert Burton who wrote On Being Certain certainty is a feeling much like anger, sadness, fear and other such strong emotions. If certainty is indeed an emotion, instead of an outcome of a series of reasonable, perhaps logical processes, then how do we work with it? If it arises much like fight/flight arises then ..... HUH!
I am so certain that this is an important piece of information, jigsaw piece about the human world. I am, so there!
For my money, Morenian action methods such as group processes, group psychotherapy, psychodrama, role training and sociodrama are brilliant ways for working with certainty and treating it as a feeling in a larger process, and for looking at the larger process. Let me know what you think at peter@moreno.com.au
