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Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely in 2019 at Tel Aviv University's Alumni Organization
Born (1967-04-29) April 29, 1967 (age 57)
New York City, New York, U.S.
EducationCognitive Psychology (PhD)
Business Administration (PhD)
Alma materDuke University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tel Aviv University
Known forBehavioral Economics
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsDuke University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisorJames Bettman
John G. Lynch Jr.
Websitedanariely.com

Dan Ariely (Hebrew: דן אריאלי; born April 29, 1967) 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 co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science.[1] Ariely wrote an advice column called Ask Ariely in the WSJ from June 2012 until September 2022.[2] Ariely is the author of the three New York Times best selling books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.[3] He co-produced the 2015 documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies.[4]

In 2021, a paper with Ariely as the fourth author was discovered to be based on falsified data and was subsequently retracted.[5][6] In 2024, Duke completed a 3-year confidential investigation and according to Ariely concluded that "data from the honesty-pledge paper had been falsified but found no evidence that Ariely used fake data knowingly".[7]

Dan Ariely’s life, research and best-selling book "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" inspired the television series, The Irrational. The Irrational is a NBC television series inspired by the life and research of Dan Ariely.[8] It premiered on September 25, 2023.[9]

Biography

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Dan Ariely was born to Yoram and Dafna Ariely in New York City while his father was studying for an MBA at Columbia University. He has two younger sisters. The family emmigrated to Israel when he was three years old. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon[3] 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 ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body.[3] 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."[10][11]

Ariely was previously married to Sumedha (Sumi) Gupta in 1998.[12] They have two children.

Education and academic career

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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, graduating in 1991. In 1994 he earned a masters in cognitive psychology, and in 1996 he earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ariely completed a second Ph.D. in Business Administration at Duke University in 1998, at the urging of Daniel Kahneman,[3][13] winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

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 the 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 by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.[3]

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."[14]

Professional Ventures and Affiliations

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In 2012, aspiring to develop a time management app that helps people "use time better," Ariely co-founded Timeful with Yoav Shoham and Jacob Bank.[15] Thanks to its successful implementation of behavioral insights to boost productivity, Timeful acquired the reputation of the "app that kills procrastination."[16] The app was acquired by Google in 2015.

In 2013, a meal that Ariely shared with Doron Marco led to his next venture: Genie, a company dedicated to creating a kitchen appliance for cooking healthy food. The company then created the Genie, "a food "replicator" launched in 2016 initially via coffee shops, hotels and offices in Israel and Australia to allow preservative-and-stabiliser-free freeze-dried meals to be cooked anywhere that lacks a kitchen."[17]

Movies

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Dan Ariely has appeared in several different films and documentaries.

In 2011, Ariely worked on a documentary, The Flaw, which investigates the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Ariely, together with other field experts, discussed the impact of systemic issues, deregulation, and risky financial practices.[18]

In 2015, Ariely appeared in another documentary, (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. It explores three key themes: why people lie, how often they do it, and the consequences of dishonest behavior.[19]

Ariety contributed to the film Boom Bust Boom (2015), a documentary about economic crashes.[20]

In 2019, Ariely appeared in The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. The documentary tracks the rise and fall of Theranos.[21]

In 2022, he contributed to Why Like This? Lama Kacha, a Hebrew television series broadcast on Kan 11. In the series, Ariely distilled complex scientific concepts and provided accessible explanations for the forces that shape human behavior, motivation, and decision-making.[22]

The Irrational TV show

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Dan Ariely’s life, research and best-selling book "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" inspired the television series, The Irrational. The Irrational is a NBC television series inspired by the life and research of Dan Ariely.[8] It premiered on September 25, 2023 [9] As Ariely wrote, "The Irrational is a TV show on NBC that is loosely based on my life and my research (very loosely)."[23] Written by Arika Mittman, and with Ariely serving as a consultant, the show premiered on NBC on September 25, 2023.

(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies

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Directed by Yael Melamede and released in 2015, "(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies" is a documentary film exploring the widespread dishonesty phenomenon in contemporary society.[24] Dan Ariely anchors the film, offering expert analysis on the psychological mechanisms that drive deceit. With references to behavioral experiments and anecdotes–from athletic and academic cheating to political scandals–, Ariely draws on his research on behavioural economics and irrationality to shed light on why and how people lie. Numerous people make appearances in the documentary, including the author and marketer Ryan Holiday, to share their personal experiences with dishonesty and lies.[25]

Controversy

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Experiment with a Research Assistant lacking ethics training

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In 2006, when Ariely was a professor at the MIT Media Lab, he conducted experiments including electric shocks with a research assistant that had no human-subjects training.[26] As a consequence the MIT's ethics committee banned Ariely from supervising data collection for a year. [27] Ariely confirmed that he was suspended from supervising data collection at MIT and said that he did not realize that the research assistant did not have the needed one hour online human-subjects training.[6][28]

Ariely released an official statement about this controversy on his website stating the following:

"So, what do I know? I certainly had approval to run this experiment. I had approval for the protocol, for the equipment, for everything. I did approach the MIT ethics board and asked them to find the original protocol, but they said that the only thing that they have now is a screenshot showing a list of all my protocols, including that protocol. And as can be seen the approval is from June 17th 2004.

I also know that one participant complained about the experiment and that she felt the pain from the electrical shocks was too high. I also know that this complaint initiated an investigation by the committee, and the investigation started they found out that something else was wrong. What was wrong? One of the research assistants running the study did not go through the hour long online training for how to deal with human subjects. Now, this was early in my days at MIT, and I was not fully aware of all the procedures. I assumed at the time that all graduate students passed the training. It turns out they did not. Having someone run a study without doing the hour long online training certainly a violation and I am guilty of that."[29]

Manipulated data in an experiment about dishonesty

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In August 2021, data from a field study in a 2012 PNAS paper[30] by Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, and Max H. Bazerman was reanalyzed on the blog Data Colada.[31][5] The blog post claimed that the study data was fabricated.[32][33] Dan Ariely denied manipulating the data prior to forwarding it on to Mazar[34] but Excel metadata showed that he created the spreadsheet and was the last to edit it. In the 2011 email exchange provided by Mazar, she pointed out to Ariely that the effect was in the opposite direction of what they hypothesized. In response, Ariely claimed that he had accidentally reversed every value in the conditions column of the dataset when he relabeled them to make them more descriptive and asked her to flip them all back. She complied.[32][35] A reporter at the New Yorker was able to obtain the original, unaltered data from the insurance company and found that the labels were never changed to be more descriptive.[36]

Ariely suggested that the data may have been fabricated by someone at the insurance company that had provided it.[37][38] In a July 2023 episode covering the allegations of misconduct, NPR's Planet Money published a statement of The Hartford, the insurance company in question, alleging substantial differences between the original dataset sent to Ariely in May 2008 and the data published by Ariely and colleagues.[39] The company said it found "significant changes made to the size, shape and characteristics of our data after we provided it and without our knowledge or consent."[39] For example, the statement said that the provided dataset contained 6,033 vehicles, while the published dataset contained 20,741. The company said that on the dataset it had provided, there was no "statistically significant difference between those who signed forms at the beginning and those who signed forms at the end", and noted that the published dataset used two different fonts, with data in Calibri font being tied to their data while data in Cambria font "appears to have been synthesized or fabricated".[39] Planet Money included a response by Ariely that "I got the data file from the insurance company in about 2007, and I can't tell now who had access to it. Getting the data file was the extent of my involvement with the data."[39][40]

Other disputes about data reliability

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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.[41] A Delta Dental spokesperson denied collecting data that could support such a claim.[42] Ariely maintained that he was told about the finding by a Delta Dental medical officer.[43] Ariely had not seen or analyzed any data to back up the claim.[43]

In July 2021, the journal Psychological Science challenged 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".[44] The authors were unable to resolve the ambiguities because the original participant-level data was no longer available. A follow-up analysis, and a letter to the editor by Gregory Francis from the Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University demonstrated that the problem in the paper could be a simple reporting error in which t-statistics were reported as F-statistics by mistake. Francis also showed that this error does not negate the findings in the original article.[45]

In November 2022 an Israeli TV investigative show, Hamakor (Channel 13), aired an episode[46][47] questioning a number of Ariely's studies that were not reproducible or for which there were substantial doubts as to their reliability—as to the way they were carried out, as to the data collected, or as to whether the studies were carried out at all. For example, Ariely claimed that data for his "Ten Commandments" study (Amir, Mazar, and Ariely, 2008) were collected in 2004–2005 at UCLA with the assistance of Professor Aimee Drolet Rossi. However, Drolet Rossi denies having run the study,[36] and UCLA has issued a statement that the study did not take place there.[36]

Advice Column in The Wall Street Journal: ‘Ask Ariely’

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Starting in June 2012, Dan Ariely contributed a weekly advice column (titled ‘Ask Ariely’) to The Wall Street Journal. In his final column titled "A Decade’s Worth of Social-Scientific Advice," published in September 2022, Ariely reflected on "the everyday value of social science research" and bid readers goodbye.[48]

Bibliography

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Books

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Ariely is the author of several popular science books about irrationality, dishonesty, and decision making. His first book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions,[49] was published in 2008 and discusses a number of systematic mistakes people commit, mostly in financial decisions.[50] Examples include overlooking downsides of "free" offers, framing effects, the problems of procrastination and self-control, and the endowment effect. In The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (2010), Ariely discusses the effects of irrationality on the workplace and personal life. Other books include Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves.

  • Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things (2023), Publisher: Bonnier Books UK, ISBN 9781785120787
  • Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter (2017). Co-authored with Jeff Kreisler. Publisher: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062651228
  • Irrationally Yours: On Missing Socks, Pick-up Lines, and Other Existential Puzzles (2015). Publisher: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062380012
  • The Honest Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves (2012, 2nd edition 2013). Publisher: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062298553
  • Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (2008, Second edition in 2012). Publisher: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780061353239

Selected publications

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Audio and video appearances

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References

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  1. ^ Olson, Parmy (May 5, 2015). "Google Buys Experimental Software That Kills Procrastination". Forbes.
  2. ^ Ariely, Dan (September 22, 2022). "A Decade's Worth of Social-Scientific Advice". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved March 14, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e Shani, Ayelett (April 5, 2012). "When Dan Ariely found the key to human nature". Haaretz. Archived from the original on April 15, 2012.
  4. ^ "(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies". IMDb. May 22, 2015.
  5. ^ a b "How data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
  6. ^ a b "Behavioral researcher says he 'undoubtedly made a mistake' in false data scandal". The Times of Israel. September 4, 2021. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
  7. ^ Taylor, Kate (February 25, 2024). "Duke's 3-year fraud investigation into Dan Ariely has ended, and the star professor still has a job. Does he want it?". Business Insider.
  8. ^ a b Petski, Denise (December 27, 2022). "'The Irrational' Drama Starring Jesse L. Martin Lands NBC Series Order". Deadline. Retrieved June 22, 2024.
  9. ^ a b "The Irrational". TVGuide.com. Retrieved July 23, 2024.
  10. ^ Ariely, Dan. "Painful Lessons" (PDF). Retrieved May 14, 2013.
  11. ^ Dahl, Melissa (July 31, 2015). "How a Terrible Accident Inspired Dan Ariely's Career Path". New York magazine. Archived from the original on November 15, 2018.
  12. ^ "Interview with Daniel Ariely, PhD". Mentor Coach. October 31, 2014. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  13. ^ "Dan Ariely CV" (PDF). labs.vtc.vt.edu. April 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 12, 2020.
  14. ^ "Winners of the Ig® Nobel Prize". Improbable Research. August 2006. Retrieved May 15, 2013.
  15. ^ Gannes, Liz (July 31, 2014). "Dan Ariely's Timeful App Helps You Better Apply Your Time". Vox. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
  16. ^ Olson, Parmy. "Google Buys Experimental Software That Kills Procrastination". Forbes. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
  17. ^ Rowan, David. "This food replicator can make dinner in under a minute". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
  18. ^ "The Flaw (2011)". rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
  19. ^ Niewijk, Grace. "Documentary Review: (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies – Yale Scientific Magazine". www.yalescientific.org. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
  20. ^ "Terry Jones' 'Boom Bust Boom' and the Greedy Monkey Theory of Economic Collapse". In These Times. March 9, 2016. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
  21. ^ "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley | Rotten Tomatoes". rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
  22. ^ "Why Like this? Lama Kacha ?" (PDF). The Israel Television Catalog. The Israeli Academy of Film and Television: 25. 2022.
  23. ^ "Updates". Dan Ariely. Retrieved June 28, 2024.
  24. ^ History News Show (October 29, 2021). The Best Dis Honesty The Truth About Lies 2021 Full English. Retrieved July 19, 2024 – via YouTube.
  25. ^ Chelin, Pamela. "Inside "(Dis)Honesty - The Truth About Lies."". Forbes. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
  26. ^ "Dan Ariely was suspended from collecting data himself at MIT after conducting an unauthorized experiment with human subjects". המקום הכי חם. August 23, 2021. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
  27. ^ Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (September 30, 2023). "They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie?". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved October 1, 2023.
  28. ^ Lukacs, Ilan (September 3, 2021). "טעיתי, המוניטין שלי יספוג מכה": דן אריאלי שובר שתיקה - ומה גרם לו לבכות?" [I was wrong, my reputation will "take a hit": Dan Arieli breaks the silence – and what made him cry?]. Channel 12 (in Hebrew).
  29. ^ "My responce[sic] to some accusations". Dan Ariely. Retrieved July 4, 2024.
  30. ^ "A study on dishonesty was based on fraudulent data". The Economist. August 20, 2021. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  31. ^ Roeloffs, Mary Whitfill. "The 2023 Halftime Report: The Biggest, Best—And Worst (So Far)". Forbes. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
  32. ^ a b "[98] Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty". Data Colada. August 17, 2021. Retrieved August 18, 2021.
  33. ^ Lee, Stephanie M. (August 20, 2021). "A Famous Honesty Researcher Is Retracting A Study Over Fake Data". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  34. ^ Ariely, Dan (August 16, 2021). "Dan Blog Comment" (PDF). datacolada.org. Retrieved January 29, 2023.
  35. ^ Charlton, Aaron (August 17, 2021). "Conflicts between Dan Ariely's statement and Footnote #14 (DataColada #98)". OpenMKT.org. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  36. ^ a b c Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (September 30, 2023). "They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie?". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved October 2, 2023.
  37. ^ Charlton, Aaron (August 21, 2022). "Dan Ariely claims authorship order shields him from blame; speculates that a low-level envelope stuffer committed the fraud". OpenMKT.org. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  38. ^ "דן אריאלי: "אנשים צועקים עליי ברחוב, קוראים לי רוצח ופסיכופת"". הארץ (in Hebrew). Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  39. ^ a b c d Fountain, Nick; Guo, Jeff; Romer, Keith; Peaslee, Emma (July 28, 2023). "Fabricated data in research about honesty. You can't make this stuff up. Or, can you?". NPR: Planet Money. Retrieved July 28, 2023.
  40. ^ Fountain, Nick (July 28, 2023). "Ariely, in a statement, now says: "Getting the data file was the extent of my involvement with the data."". Twitter. Retrieved July 29, 2023. As I said two years ago, I was responsible for relationship with the insurance company that provided the data for the paper. I got the data file from the insurance company in about 2007 and I can't tell now who had access to it. Getting the data file was the extent of my involvement with the data.
  41. ^ "The 'Irrational' Way Humans Interact With Dentists". NPR. October 5, 2010. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  42. ^ "Letters: Dentists". NPR. October 13, 2010. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  43. ^ a b Shepard, Alicia C. (November 8, 2010). "Should You be Suspicious of Your Dentist or NPR's Source?". WBUR.
  44. ^ Bauer, Patricia J.; Ariely, Dan (July 23, 2021). "Expression of Concern: Effort for Payment: A Tale of Two Markets". Psychological Science. 32 (8): 1338–1339. doi:10.1177/09567976211035782. ISSN 0956-7976. PMID 34296633. S2CID 236200023.
  45. ^ Francis, Gregory (2021). "Letter to the Editors of Psychological Science: Resolving Inconsistencies With Data Gleaning: Regarding Bauer and Ariely (2021)". Psychological Science. doi:10.25384/SAGE.16543740.v1.
  46. ^ "המקור, עונה 21, פרק 19: חוקר השקרים | חדשות 13". רשת 13 (in Hebrew). Retrieved November 12, 2022.
  47. ^ "Dan Ariely Investigation by The Source – The Lies Researcher – Transcript". www.thebehavioralscientist.com. July 8, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  48. ^ Ariely, Dan (September 22, 2022). "A Decade's Worth of Social-Scientific Advice". WSJ.
  49. ^ Elizabeth Kolbert (February 25, 2008). "What Was I Thinking?". The New Yorker.
  50. ^ Tokaz, Derek (February 28, 2008). "Predictably Irrational Is an Irresistible Look at Our Not-So-Rational Foibles" (PDF). The Commentator (Student newspaper of NYU Law School). New York University School of Law. p. 7.
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