Dan Ariely ( he, דן אריאלי; born April 29, 1967) is an Israeli-American professor and author. He serves as a
James B. Duke Professor of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
behavioral economics
Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...
at
Duke University. Ariely is the founder of the research institution The Center for Advanced Hindsight, as well as the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science.
Ariely's
TED talks have been viewed over 15 million times. Ariely is the author of the three
''New York Times'' best sellers ''
Predictably Irrational'', ''
The Upside of Irrationality'', and ''
The Honest Truth about Dishonesty'',
as well as the books ''Dollars and Sense'', ''Irrationally Yours'' – a collection of his ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' advice column "Ask Ariely"; and ''Payoff'', a short
TED book. Ariely appeared in several documentary films, including ''
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley'' and produced and participated in ''
(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies''.
Early life and family
Dan Ariely was born to Yoram and Dafna Ariely in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
while his father was studying for an
MBA degree at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...
. He has two sisters. The family emigrated to
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
when he was three. He grew up in
Ramat Hasharon
Ramat HaSharon ( he, רָמַת הַשָּׁרוֹן, ''lit.'' ''Sharon Heights'', ar, رمات هشارون) is a city located on Israel's central coastal strip in the south of the Sharon region, bordering Tel Aviv to the south, Hod HaSharon to ...
and attended Makif Hasharon High School.
In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active in
Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli
youth movement. While he was preparing a ' (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing
third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.
In his writings entitled “Painful Lessons,” Ariely described his hospitalization and treatments, detailing how that experience led to his research on "how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients."
Ariely married Sumedha (Sumi) Gupta in 1998. They have two children, and are now divorced.
Education and academic career
Ariely was a
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...
and
mathematics major at
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...
but transferred to
philosophy and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
. However, in his last year he dropped philosophy and concentrated solely on psychology, graduating in 1991. In 1994 he earned a masters in cognitive psychology, and in 1996 he earned a Ph.D. in
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which r ...
. Ariely completed a second Ph.D. in Business Administration at
Duke University in 1998, at the urging of
Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarde ...
,
winner of the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
.
Ariely taught at
MIT between 1998 and 2008, where he was formerly the
Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. ( ; May 23, 1875February 17, 1966) was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a long-time president, chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation. Sloan, first as a senior executive and lat ...
Professor of
Behavioral Economics
Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...
at
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, a ...
and at the
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
.
In 2008, Ariely returned to Duke University as
James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics. Ariely's laboratory at Duke University, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money,
decision making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...
by physicians and patients,
cheating
Cheating generally describes various actions designed to subvert rules in order to obtain unfair advantages. This includes acts of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in any situation where individuals are given preference using inappropriate cri ...
, and
social justice
Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...
.
Accusations of data fraud and academic misconduct
In 2010, Ariely told
NPR in an interview that data from Delta Dental, an insurance provider, showed that dentists frequently (with a probability of "about 50 percent") misdiagnosed cavities when analyzing X-rays, and speculated that this might happen so that dentists could charge more money. A Delta Dental spokesperson later stated that they do not collect data that could support such a conclusion.
In July 2021, the journal ''Psychological Science'' issued an Expression of Concern regarding a 2004 paper by James Heyman and Dan Ariely, "prompted by some uncertainty regarding the values of statistical tests reported in the article and the analytic approach taken to the data". Due to the five year data retention standard, the authors were unable to resolve the ambiguities. In August 2021, a 2012 PNAS paper
by Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, and Max H. Bazerman was reanalyzed by the blog Data Colada. The blog proposed that study data was potentially manipulated.
The paper was retracted.
Later in August 2021, the online news journal Hamakom reported that while Ariely was at MIT, he ran an experiment involving electrical shock without prior required ethics approval, regarding the value of placebos (''Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy''). One of the participants complained, and MIT's Institutional Review Board (IRB) only granted a human experiment approval (with modifications) after the experiment was concluded. The ethics committee decided to forbid Ariely to run experiments for a year, after which he moved to Duke University. Ariely confirmed that he was suspended and said it was a misunderstanding between him and the IRB.
In November 2022, a TV investigation show Hamakor (Channel 13) aired an episode questioning a number of Ariely's studies that were not reproducible or that there are significant doubts about their reliability - the way they were carried out, the data collected or in general the very fact that they were carried out. For example, Ariely claimed that data for his "Ten Commandments" study (Amir, Mazar, and Ariely, 2008) was collected at UCLA with the assistance of Professor Aimee Drolet. However, Drolet denies that she ran the study as the authors describe. UCLA confirmed that the study was not conducted at UCLA.
Business activities
In 2010, Ariely co-founded BEworks, a management consulting firm dedicated to applying behavioral science to business and policy challenges. BEworks was acquired by kyu Collective in January 2017. In 2012, he co-founded, with Yuval Shoham and Jacob Bank, Timeful,
a technology company aiming to help people manage their time. Timeful was acquired by Google in 2015. In 2013, he co-founded, with Doron Marco and Ayelet Carasso, Genie,
a kitchen appliance designed to cook personalized healthy dishes in about a minute.
In 2015, Ariely was named chief behavioral economist for Qapital. Ariely, who has also invested in the company, uses his access to the app's platform and database to assist him in independent research on consumer saving and spending behavior. In turn, Qapital can access Ariely's research to test technologies and ideas for use in the app. In 2016, Ariely was named Chief Behavioral Officer for Lemonade, an insurance company, to integrate aspects of behavioral economics into Lemonade's insurance model and help them align incentives between the insurer and insured.
In 2017, he co-founded, with Nati Lavi, Shapa, a health monitoring and encouraging company.
In 2018, he co-founded the company Kayma, which uses behavioral economics and original research methods. The company works on projects for the Israeli government's Ministry of Finance.
Books
Ariely is the author of the books ''Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter'',
''Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions'', ''The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home'' and ''
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves''.
He explains the impetus for his first book: When asked whether reading ''Predictably Irrational'' and understanding one's irrational behaviors could make a person's life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of a
placebo
A placebo ( ) is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like Saline (medicine), saline), sham surgery, and other procedures.
In general ...
), Ariely responded that there could be a short-term cost, but that there would also likely be long-term benefits, and that reading his book would not make a person worse off.
Asked to describe ''The Upside of Irrationality'', Ariely says,
In 2008 Ariely, along with his co-authors, Rebecca Waber,
Ziv Carmon
Ziv Carmon is the Dean of Research, Professor of Business Administration, and holder of The Alfred H. Heineken Chaired Professorship at INSEAD. An expert in human judgment and decision-making, he is best known for his research on placebo effects ...
and
Baba Shiv, was awarded an
Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prize ( ) is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name o ...
in medicine for their research demonstrating that "high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine."
Works
Books
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*''Amazing Decisions: The Illustrated Guide to Improving Business Deals and Family Meals'' (illustrated by Matt R. Trower), Hill & Wang, 2019, p. 224,
Articles
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Audio and video appearances
How equal do we want the world to be? You'd be surprised(TED2015)
Are we in control of our own decisions?(EG 2008)
Our buggy moral code(TED2009)
Beware conflicts of interest(TED2011)
What makes us feel good about our work?(TEDxRiodelaPlata 2012)
* ''
(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies''
* ''
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley''
See also
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Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, ...
*
Procrastination
Procrastination is the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. The word has originated from the Latin word ''procrastinatus'', which itself evo ...
References
External links
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BEworks.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ariely, Dan
1967 births
Living people
Jewish American economists
Economists from New York (state)
Behavioral economists
Israeli economists
Israeli Jews
Fuqua School of Business alumni
Duke University faculty
MIT Sloan School of Management faculty
Tel Aviv University alumni
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
Positive psychologists
MIT Media Lab people
21st-century American economists
21st-century American Jews