Hey everyone, and welcome back to Predicting the Rational, the blog where I bravely attempt to apply structured thinking to the glorious chaos that is human behavior. Today, we’re talking about April. Ah, lovely, sunny April. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, taxes are due… and according to T.S. Eliot, it’s the cruellest darn month of the year. Which, frankly, is a bit of a mood, right?
Eliot’s line, “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain,” is pure poetry, yes. But isn’t there something behaviorally suspect about it? Winter is easy. Everything’s dead or asleep, covered in a nice, predictable blanket of snow or just general bleakness. Our expectations are low. But April? April shows up, demands renewal, shoves beauty in your face, and suddenly all those things you successfully repressed since, oh, probably last April, come bubbling up. It’s like spring is gaslighting us with sunshine while we’re trying to process, well, everything. From a psychological standpoint, maybe that contrast is the cruelty – the vibrant external world throwing your internal landscape into harsh, uncomfortable relief. It’s rude, honestly.
Remember April 2020? It already felt like the world was upside down, and then came the heartbreaking news about Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor. Losing such beloved figures, especially in a month typically associated with new beginnings, felt particularly jarring, almost… wrong. The reference to Eliot’s line in the letter from Irrfan’s wife resonated because it perfectly captured that feeling of a beautiful month delivering profound sadness. It’s like the universe had a particularly cruel sense of irony that year.
Now, for something completely different, but equally indicative of April’s potential behavioral pitfalls: car crashes. I swear I read somewhere (and please, don’t take this as peer-reviewed financial advice, or really, any kind of advice) that fender benders supposedly tick up in April. The alleged reason? Drivers (let’s be real, the article probably implied male drivers, adding another layer of eyebrow-raising behavioral data) might be… a little distracted by the sudden appearance of summer fashion after months of winter coats. Look, I’m not saying it’s definitely true, but isn’t there a wonderfully absurd behavioral economics angle there? Forget complex decision trees! Maybe risk assessment on the road is influenced by… seasonal sartorial changes and attentional capture? It’s a quirky, slightly terrifying thought, suggesting our “rational” driving choices might be influenced by factors entirely outside the traditional model of road safety.
And if that’s not enough April-induced behavioral weirdness, let’s throw in Ismail Kadare’s haunting novel, Broken April. The premise involves an ancient Albanian custom where a man is practically fated to commit a murder and then live the month of April under the shadow of being killed in retaliation, all dictated by a strict, cyclical code. It’s an extreme example, but it speaks to how deeply ingrained cultural norms and a sense of predetermined fate (perhaps felt more acutely as nature follows its predetermined cycle in spring?) can override individual will and rational self-preservation. You thought balancing work-life was hard? Try living by a calendar where April means a literal date with destiny dictated by generations-old rules. It makes you wonder about the “rationality” of following norms, even deadly ones, and how much our choices are truly our own when steeped in tradition and expectation.
So, what’s the behavioral econ takeaway from all this April madness? Maybe it’s that predicting human behavior isn’t just about calculating utility maximization in a vacuum. It’s about understanding how our internal emotional states (amplified by external contrasts), our susceptibility to environmental distractions (shiny things! new clothes!), and the heavy, often irrational weight of cultural narratives and perceived fate all conspire to make us act… well, like humans.
April might be cruel in the poetic sense, but perhaps its greatest cruelty, for us behavioral economists anyway, is how starkly it reveals the limits of purely rational prediction. It’s a beautiful, messy, distracting, and sometimes heartbreaking reminder that the “rational” is always, always interacting with the wonderfully unpredictable “irrational” within us all.
Stay quirky, stay kind, and maybe drive extra carefully this month.