Most Popular Books by Dan Ariely

Perché se prendiamo un’aspirina da un centesimo il mal di testa ci rimane, ma scompare quando ne prendiamo una da cinquanta centesimi? Perché siamo disposti a spendere per un pasto luculliano, ma raccogliamo i coupon del supermercato per risparmiare cinquanta centesimi su una scatola di pelati? Quando si tratta di prendere decisioni nella nostra vita, pensiamo di fare scelte intelligenti e razionali. Ma è davvero così? In questo suo titolo ormai classico, che ha segnato una svolta negli studi di psicologia comportamentale, Dan Ariely ci dimostra (con aneddoti divertenti) che ogni giorno prendiamo decisioni del tutto irrazionali. Eppure, anche i comportamenti più insensati nascondono al loro interno una logica, che deriva dal nostro essere animali più emotivi che razionali. Ma non è finita qui, Ariely ci svela che nonostante tutto siamo estremamente prevedibili (molto più di quanto immaginiamo) e con qualche stratagemma intelligente possiamo sfruttare al meglio questa nostra irrazionalità, sia nella vita personale che per influenzare il mondo attorno a noi.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Powerful, timely messages collected in one convenient boxed set, an illuminating must-read from three of the leading business minds of our time and renowned TED speakers—Dan Ariely, Margaret Heffernan, and Barry Schwartz—that offers expert insight into our current economic times. Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations investigates the true nature of motivation, our partial blindness to the way it works, and a journey to try and bridge this gap. From the Zappos boardroom to a child’s allowance, Dan Ariely digs to the root of money motivation—how it works and how we can use this knowledge to approach disparate choices in our own lives. Along the way Ariely explores complex questions like why are we willing to part with money in some occasions and not others? Is it a good idea to try to motivate children by giving them money to do chores? When are bonuses most effective at work? In Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes, business leader Margaret Heffernan looks back over decades spent overseeing different organizations and comes to a counterintuitive conclusion: it’s the small shifts that have the greatest impact. From the CIA revolutionizing their intelligence gathering with one simple question, to an organization increasing their revenue by 15 million by instituting a short coffee break, Heffernan investigates all these scenarios and comes to the same conclusion: big improvements can come from simply making small changes. If the reason we work is primarily for a paycheck, why are so many people dissatisfied with their work, despite healthy compensation? And why do so many people find immense fulfillment and satisfaction through “menial” jobs? In Why We Work, Barry Schwartz takes us through hospitals and hair salons, auto plants and boardrooms, showing workers in all walks of life, highlighting the trends and patterns that lead to happiness in the workplace. Ultimately, Schwartz empowers us all to find great work by proving that the root of what drives us to good work can rarely be incentivized, and the cause of bad work is often an attempt to do just that.

”Este é o livro mais interessante e útil de Dan Ariely" – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Lançado anteriormente como A mais pura verdade sobre a desonestidade. Inclui capítulo inédito. Este livro mudará a maneira como você enxerga a si mesmo, suas ações e o comportamento dos outros. A chance de sermos pegos afeta nossa probabilidade de fazer algo errado? De que maneira as empresas estimulam comportamentos antiéticos? O trabalho em equipe nos torna mais ou menos honestos? A religião influencia nossa conduta moral? Neste livro, o economista comportamental Dan Ariely explora de que forma o desvio de conduta ocorre nos âmbitos pessoal, profissional e político, e como isso afeta até mesmo aqueles que todos acreditam ter os mais elevados padrões morais. Em geral acreditamos que o ato de trapacear é baseado em análises racionais de custo-benefício. Porém, o autor revela que são as forças irracionais, que não levamos em conta, que frequentemente determinam nosso comportamento. Com um estilo próprio, que lembra Malcolm Gladwell, Ariely demonstra que a desonestidade é inerente à condição humana. Prepare-se para conhecer toda a verdade.

本书回答了传统经济学解释不了的生活秘密。内容包括:相对论的真相、供求关系的谬误、零成本的成本、社会规范的成本、性兴奋的影响、拖沓的恶习与自我控制、所有权的高昂代价等。

An evaluation of the sources of illogical decisions explores the reasons why irrational thought often overcomes level-headed practices, offering insight into the structural patterns that cause people to make the same mistakes repeatedly.

"Behavioral psychologist and economist, best selling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, explains how unethical behavior works in our personal, professional, and political world... But all is not lost, he also identifies what keep us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives..." Vietnamese translation by Le Trung Hoang Tuyen. In Vietnamese. Annotation copyright Tsai Fong Books, Inc. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

This paper challenges the common assumption that economic agents know their tastes. After reviewing previous research showing that valuation of ordinary products and experiences can be manipulated by non-normative cues, we present three studies showing that in some cases people do not even have a pre-existing sense of whether an experience is good or bad -- even when they have experienced a sample of it.

We document that eBay bidders exhibit a biased preference for auctions with more bids, even if these are non-diagnostic of quality, creating an incentive for sellers to lower starting prices to attract early bids. We find that lowering starting prices succeeds in increasing the likelihood that an auction will receive additional bids, conditioning on its current price. We also find that, conditioning on dollar amount bid by bidders, those who engage in non-rational herding are less likely to win, and when they do win they pay higher prices. Supporting the premise that this is a mistake, experience reduces dramatically the tendency to engage in non-rational herding. Remarkably, the seller side of the market is in equilibrium: a high enough share of sellers chooses low starting prices for expected revenues to be identical for high and low starting prices. In sum, market forces in eBay eliminate the rents associated with exploiting the behavioral bias we identify, but not the bias itself.

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals'' motivation to think outside the box and that this increased motivation leads to unethical behavior. In four studies, we show that participants with creative personalities who scored high on a test measuring divergent thinking tended to cheat more (Study 1); that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Study 2); and that participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly because of their creativity motivation (Study 3) and greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior (Study 4). Finally, a field study constructively replicates these effects and demonstrates that individuals who work in more creative positions are also more morally flexible (Study 5). The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.

People often do not realize they are being influenced by an incidental emotional state. As a result, decisions based on a fleeting incidental emotion can become the basis for future decisions and hence outlive the original cause for the behavior (i.e., the emotion itself). Using a sequence of ultimatum and dictator games, we provide empirical evidence for the enduring impact of transient emotions on economic decision making. Behavioral consistency and false consensus are presented as potential underlying processes.

The advent of electronic environments is bound to have profound effects on consumer decision making. While the exact nature of these influences is only partially known it is clear that consumers could benefit from properly designed electronic agents that know individual users'' preferences and can act on their behalf. An examination of the various roles agents perform is presented as a framework for thinking about the design of electronic agents. In addition, a set of goals is established that include both outcome-based measures, such as improving decision quality, as well as process measures like increasing satisfaction and developing trust.

What is the role of early experiences in shaping preferences? What are the mechanisms by which such early encounters influence the way preferences are formed? In this research, we examine the impact of the entry position and favorability of initial (and ongoing) experiences on preference development. We predict that the starting point will heavily influence which particular region people select from initially, and favorableness of early experiences and myopic search will both limit their search to that particular region. Across four studies, we find that when the initial experiences are favorable, subjects engage in lower levels of search, experience only a narrow breadth of possible alternatives, demonstrate less ongoing experimentation, and have a reduction in the amount of preference development. Copyright of Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes is the property of Academic Press Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder''s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.

A great deal of late bidding has been observed on internet auctions such as eBay, which employ a second price auction with a fixed deadline. Much less late bidding has been observed on internet auctions such as those run by Amazon, which employ similar auction rules, but use an ending rule that automatically extends the auction if necessary after the scheduled close until ten minutes have passed without a bid. This paper reports an experiment that allows us to examine the effect of the different ending rules under controlled conditions, without the other differences between internet auction houses that prevent unambiguous interpretation of the field data. We find that the difference in auction ending rules is sufficient by itself to produce the differences in late bidding observed in the field data. The experimental data also allow us to examine how individuals bid in relation to their private values, and how this behavior is shaped by the different opportunities for learning provided in the auction conditions.

Funeral rituals perform important social functions for families and communities, but little is known about the motives of people planning funerals. Using mixed methods, we examine funeral planning as end-of-life relational spending. We identify how relational motives drive and manifest in funeral planning, even when the primary recipient of goods and services is dead. Qualitative interviews with consumers who had planned pre-COVID funerals (N=15) reveal a caring orientation drives funeral decision-making for loved ones and for self-planned funerals. Caring practices manifest in three forms: (a) balancing preferences between the planner, deceased, and surviving family, (b) making personal sacrifices, and (c) spending amount (Study 1). Archival funeral contract data (N=385) reveals supporting quantitative evidence of caring-driven funeral spending. Planners spend more on funerals for others and underspend on their own funerals (Study 2). Pre-registered experiments (N=1,906) addressing selection bias replicate these results and find generalization across different funding sources (planner-funded, other-funded, and insurance; Studies 3A-3C). The findings elucidate a ubiquitous, emotional, and financially consequential decision process at the end of life.

In three experiments, we examine whether individuals cheat more when other individuals can benefit from their cheating (they do) and when the number of beneficiaries of wrongdoing is larger (they do). Our results indicate that people use moral flexibility in justifying their self-interested actions when such actions benefit others in addition to the self. Namely, our findings suggest that when others can benefit from one''s dishonesty people consider larger dishonesty as morally acceptable and thus can benefit from their cheating and simultaneously feel less guilty about it. We discuss the implications of these results for collaborations in the social realm.

Standard economic models assume that the weight given to information from different sources depends exclusively on its diagnosticity. In this paper we study whether the same piece of information is weighted more heavily simply because it arose from direct experience rather than from observation. We investigate this possibility by conducting repeated game experiments in which groups of players are randomly rematched on every round and receive feedback about the actions and outcomes of all players. We find that participants'' actions are influenced more strongly by the behavior of players they directly interact with than by those they only observe.

We demonstrate that marketing actions such as pricing can alter the actual efficacy of products to which they are applied. These placebo effects stem from activation of expectancies about the efficacy of the product, a process that appears not to be conscious. In three experiments we show that consumers paying a discounted price for a product (e.g., an energy drink thought to increase mental acuity) can end up deriving less actual benefit from consuming this product (e.g., they are able to solve fewer puzzles) compared to consumers who purchase and consume the exact same product but pay its regular price. Our studies consistently support the role of expectancies in mediating this placebo effect. We conclude by discussing theoretical, managerial and public policy implications of the findings.

We investigate how the perceived fairness of an income distribution depends on the beliefs about the process that generates the inequality. Specifically, we examine how two crucial features of this process affect fairness views: (1) Procedural justice - equal treatment of all; (2) Agency - one''s ability to determine his/her income. We do this in a lab experiment by differentially varying subjects'' ability to influence their earnings. Comparison of ex-post redistribution decisions of total earnings under different conditions indicate both agency and procedural justice to matter for fairness. Highlighting the importance of agency, we observe lower redistribution of unequal earnings resulting from risk when risk is chosen freely. Highlighting the importance of procedural justice, we find introduction of inequality of opportunity to significantly increase redistribution. Despite this increase, under inequality of opportunity, the share of subjects redistributing none remain close to the share of subjects redistributing fully revealing an underlying heterogeneity in the population about how fairness views should account for inequality of opportunity.