Bugs In Our Moral Code
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it's OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we're predictably irrational -- and can be influenced in ways we can't grasp.
Video - 16 minutes in duration
Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University,
where he holds appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive
Neuroscience, and the department of Economics.
In addition, Dan is a visiting professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences, a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, a fellow at Diamond Management and Technology Consultants, and President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.
He is also the author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. He is currently working on a new book titled Dining Without Crumbs: The Art of Eating Over the Sink.
As a behavioral economist, Dan Ariely studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational. His interests span a wide range of daily behaviors such as buying (or not), saving (or not), ordering food in restaurants, pain management, procrastination, dishonesty, and decision making under different emotional states. His experiments are consistently interesting, amusing, and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.
Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Tel Aviv University, his master’s and doctorate degrees in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina, and a doctorate in Business Administration from Duke University.
His research has been published in leading psychology, economics, and marketing and management research journals, and has been featured occasionally in the popular press (The New York Times, the New Yorker Magazine, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, etc). From time to time he has provided commentaries for National Public Radio, The New York Times and CNN.
