Sway

Why would a highly experienced airline pilot, with a perfectly functioning plane, ignore multiple warnings from his co-pilot and the control tower, and crash into another jet on the runway? Why would a star college basketball player, offered a guaranteed multi-million dollar NBA contract, turn it down to stay in school, only to suffer a career-ending injury a few weeks later? These are symptoms of powerful, unseen psychological currents that pull us off course, often toward disaster, even when we are staring directly at the facts. These forces don't just affect pilots or athletes; they are at play when we overpay for a house in a bidding war, cling to a failing stock, or refuse to walk away from a project that is clearly doomed. We believe we are in control, making rational choices, but we are often just passengers on a journey directed by these hidden sways.

The patterns behind these self-defeating behaviors fascinated two brothers, Ori and Rom Brafman. Ori, a business consultant and organizational expert, repeatedly saw brilliant executives make bafflingly irrational decisions that sabotaged their own companies. Rom, a psychologist, saw the same destructive patterns in his clinical practice, where individuals wrestled with choices that defied their own best interests. They realized that the forces derailing a CEO’s strategy were eerily similar to those affecting a pilot in a cockpit or an individual making a personal life choice. By combining their expertise from the worlds of business and psychology, they set out to identify and expose these universal, irrational forces, creating a guide to help us recognize when we are being swayed and learn how to regain control.

Module 1: The Twin Engines of Irrationality — Loss Aversion and Commitment

We often get trapped in bad situations. We stay in jobs we hate. We pour money into failing projects. Why is it so hard to walk away? The Brafmans argue it's a feature of our psychological wiring. Two powerful forces, loss aversion and commitment, work together to keep us stuck.

First, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of winning. This is loss aversion. Researchers proved this with simple consumer studies. When the price of eggs went down, people bought a few more. But when the price went up by the same amount, people cut their buying by 2.5 times as much. The fear of losing money was a much stronger motivator than the prospect of saving it. This explains why we buy useless insurance waivers on rental cars. We are reacting to the amplified fear of a potential loss, not calculating the odds.

This gets worse under pressure. Captain Jacob van Zanten was KLM’s top pilot. He was literally the head of safety. But on a foggy runway in Tenerife, he faced mounting delays. He feared the "loss" of time, money, and reputation. This fear became so intense it overrode his decades of training. He ignored his copilot. He took off without clearance. He caused the deadliest accident in aviation history. Loss aversion turned an expert into a gambler.

Then comes the second engine: commitment. Once we invest in a course of action, we become psychologically bound to it. We don't want to admit our initial decision was wrong. So we double down. This is the "sunk cost fallacy" in action. Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman demonstrates this with a simple auction. He auctions off a $20 bill. The catch? The runner-up has to pay their final bid and gets nothing. Bidding starts low. But once it passes $12, a trap is set. The top two bidders are now driven by both commitment and loss aversion. They don't want to lose the money they've already bid. They become committed to winning. The auction doesn't end at $20. It often goes far beyond, with students paying absurd amounts like $204 for a $20 bill. They are desperately trying not to lose.

And here's the thing. These forces combine to create a dangerous feedback loop. Consider President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War. Initially, he was committed to his "Great Society" domestic programs. He saw Vietnam as a limited engagement to stop communism. But as costs and casualties mounted, loss aversion kicked in. He couldn't accept the "loss" of a war or appear weak. His commitment to the initial strategy deepened. Each new investment of troops and resources made it harder to pull out. Like the bidders in the auction, he became trapped. Recognizing when you are "chasing a loss" is the first step to breaking free. You have to ask a hard question. If you weren't already invested, would you jump in today? If the answer is no, it's time to cut your losses.