Irrational Emotions In Hamlet

In William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, several characters are blinded by their emotions which cause them to behave irrational. Hamlet is furious about his father being murdered. He contemplates suicide and then murders Polonius and then Claudius. Also while trying to do that Gertrude dies. Ophelia falls greatly in love with Hamlet but, he is not in love with her. After finding out her dad died, she went mad and eventually killed herself. Claudius wants to be king, so he murders Hamlet's father to be able to take the crown. He then tried to poison Hamlet, but ended up killing his new wife Gertrude. Hamlets, Ophelias, and Claudius’s irrational behaviors which stem from their blindness by their emotions can be explained using principles of behavioral economics.
In the book Predictably Irrational behavioral economist Dan Ariely talks heavily about how people’s emotions affect their decision making. An example of this from the book is that they took a sample of college students and gave them a list of questions to answer when they were not sexually aroused. Then later they handed them a saran wrapped laptop and had them answer the same exact questions when they were highly sexually aroused. The results of the experiment were truly incredible because the way the college students answered the questions when they were …show more content…
Dan Ariely wrote “ We have problems with self-control, related to immediate and delayed gratification, no doubt there. But each of the problems we face has potential self- control mechanisms, as well” (146). This means that all of us deal with problems with procrastination, but it can be for different reasons. Hamlet struggled on whether to kill himself or to act and get revenge on his father's murder. If he had thought logically for a little, then acted then he would of been better off, but instead he waited forever on deciding what to do and it cost him his