Dan Ariely


Dan Ariely is an Israeli-American professor and author. He serves as a James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. Ariely is the founder of the research institution The Center for Advanced Hindsight, co-founder of the companies Kayma, BEworks, Timeful, Genie and Shapa., the Chief Behavioral Economist of Qapital and the Chief Behavioral Officer of Lemonade. 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 popular The Wall Street Journal advice column “Ask Ariely”; and Payoff, a short TED book. Ariely appeared in several documentary films, including ' and produced and participated in '. In 2018 Ariely was named one of the 50 most influential living psychologists in the world.

Early life and family

Dan Ariely was born in New York City while his father was studying for an MBA degree at Columbia University. The family emigrated to Israel when he was three. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon. In his senior year of high school, he was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While he was preparing a ktovet esh 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, Ariely describes how that experience led to his research on "how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients."
Ariely is happily divorced. He has two children, son Amit and daughter Neta.

Education and academic career

Ariely was a physics and mathematics major at Tel Aviv University but transferred to philosophy and psychology. However, in his last year he dropped philosophy and concentrated solely on psychology. In 1996 he earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed a second PhD in Marketing at Duke University in 1998, at the urging of Nobel economic sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman.
Ariely taught at MIT between 1998 and 2008, where he was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management and at the MIT Media Lab. In 2008 Ariely returned to Duke University as James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics.

Business activities

In 2010 Ariely founded BEworks, the first management consulting firm dedicated to applying behavioral science to strategy, marketing, operations, 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 dedicated to reinventing the way people manage their most precious resource - 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 2017, he co-founded, with Nati Lavi, Shapa, a health monitoring and encouraging company.
In 2018 he co-founded the company Kayma, which specializes in solving complex wide-scale problems through behavioral economics and original research methods.
In October 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. Entrepreneur magazine observed: "It's a synergistic relationship that points at the emergence of a new trend: the collaboration between startups and social scientists."
In February 2016, Ariely was named Chief Behavioral Officer for Lemonade, a full-stack insurance company operating in the U.S. Ariely integrates aspects of behavioral economics into Lemonade's insurance model and helps to align incentives between the insurer and insured.

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, 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,
Michael S. Roth writes of The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, "Ariely raises the bar for everyone. In the increasingly crowded field of popular cognitive science and behavioral economics, he writes with an unusual combination of verve and sagacity. He asks us to remember our fallibility and irrationality, so that we might protect ourselves against our tendency to fool ourselves."
In 2008 Ariely, along with his co-authors, Rebecca Waber, Ziv Carmon and Baba Shiv, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in medicine for their research demonstrating that "high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine."

Other works

Kayma

Ariely's firm Kayma combines research, technology and experience design to drive behavioral change in complex sectors such as education, healthcare, finance and infrastructure. The company is spearheading an array of projects for the Israeli government's Ministry of Finance. Ariely conducts the company's original research through Kayma Labs.

Center for Advanced Hindsight

Ariely's laboratory, the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money, decision making by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.

BEworks

Ariely is the co-founder of BEworks Inc., a firm that applies behavioral economics to business and policy challenges.

Arming the Donkeys

Arming The Donkeys is a podcast of Ariely's interviews with researchers in the fields of social and natural sciences.

Books

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