Skip to content

Author

Alina Petrova

Editor-in-chief

Alina Petrova is a Year 12 student preparing to apply to university, and the founder and editor of The Unreasonable Human. She reads across psychology, economics, behavioural science and neuroscience, and writes about the gap between how people are supposed to decide and how they actually do.

Why she started the journal

Writing by Alina Petrova

The pension that enrolled itself

Automatic enrolment is the revolution's great success. It is also its only one.

25 Aug 20269 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

Is rationality overrated?

With Prof. Gerd Gigerenzer on simple rules, fast decisions, and why the textbook's idea of a rational person would not survive a week.

23 Aug 20262 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

A short history of the borrowed book

The story we tell afterwards is tidier than the choice we made at the time.

22 Aug 20268 min read

Illustration of a bare tree over a faint grid, overlaid with rust-red, pale blue and black-spotted circles

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Some of the studies have not replicated and the two-systems metaphor has frayed. The book is still where you start.

16 Aug 20268 min read

A lone figure climbing a pale stone staircase towards an arched window filled with light

Honest Company

We are far better at explaining our choices than at making them.

14 Aug 20266 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

The case against the waiting room

The mind is built for a different world. It copes remarkably well with this one.

14 Aug 202611 min read

The promise

A cheap, gentle, evidence-based way to make people better off. What could go wrong?

11 Aug 202610 min read

Illustration of a bare tree over a faint grid, overlaid with rust-red, pale blue and black-spotted circles

Is expertise overrated?

With Prof. Anya Brenner on what hope does to markets, marriages and the morning commute, and whether we should try to fix it.

9 Aug 20263 min read

A lone figure climbing a pale stone staircase towards an arched window filled with light

The patience of the deadline

Before we try to fix people, it is worth understanding what they are for.

7 Aug 20265 min read

Pale pink blossom on thin branches in front of a raw concrete wall

Why we wait for a sign

We are far better at explaining our choices than at making them.

31 Jul 202610 min read

People crossing a sunlit concrete hall

The Quiet Money

Economists have a model. The rest of us have a Tuesday.

29 Jul 20266 min read

A lone figure climbing a pale stone staircase towards an arched window filled with light

Status, by the numbers

The story we tell afterwards is tidier than the choice we made at the time.

29 Jul 20267 min read