Sway - The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

I recently finished Sway - The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman.  It's a great book that might not have given me very many imminent benefits, but surely some long term ones. It discusses how humans are influenced, or 'swayed', by irrational thought. Three terms are brought up repeatedly in the book that offer a concise summary:

Loss aversion - the tendency to go to great lengths to avoid possible losses
This is the influence that leads people to stay committed to failing causes. Brafman tells a story of a professor who convinced his students to pay more than one hundred dollars for a twenty dollar bill in an auction. In his auction, everybody was free to bid; there were only two rules.

1. Bids were to be made in $1 dollar increments
2. The winner of the auction wins the bill, but the runner-up must still honor his or her bid, while receiving nothing in return.

The bidding starts out fast until it reaches $12 to $16 dollars, when people realize where it's going. Everyone except the two highest bidders drop out of the auction. They both don't want to be the one who payed good money for nothing. They play not to lose instead of playing not to win. The commitment to a chosen path inspires additional bids, driving the price up, making the potential loss larger. So students keep bidding past twenty. It's an incredibly powerful force, and you can see how irrational it is.

Value attribution - the inclination to imbue a person or thing with certain qualities based on perceived value
It's the force that leads people to assume intelligence. It's what makes us overlook phenomena. We assume too much.
I'm sure you've heard about the subway experiment a famous violin player, Joshua Bell, took part in. If not, read about it here. It's a perfect example of value attribution.

There's also something called the Pygmalion effect and Golem effect which describe how we take on positive and negative traits assigned to us by someone else, respectively. It's fascinating how this happens. When people treat us according to their perceived value of us, we actually take on the traits they assign. We are actually able to respond to the subtle hints and clues people give off while entirely unconscious of it.

Diagnosis bias - blindness to all evidence that contradicts our initial assessment of a person or situation
Like value attribution, this is presumptuous. Under this bias, people disregard things that may make their assessment of someone or something more accurate. For example, a doctor overlooking certain symptoms in favor of a simple diagnosis.

I didn't ever want to put this book down. It's all written in a story/analysis format, which I love.
If only more people were aware of these subtle forces...