Irrationally rational dan ariely biography
Officially, I am the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University. I founded the Center for Advanced Hindsight, wrote a few books, took part in a few media project and startups. I co-created of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies, and I wrote three-time New York Times bestsellers: Predictably Irrational, The Upside of irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. I also wrote a few books that did not make it to the New York Times bestsellers list: Irrationally Yours, Payoff, Amazing Decisions and Dollars and Sense. My new book, MISBELIEF: WHAT MAKES RATIONAL PEOPLE BELIEVE IRRATIONAL THINGS began with my own experience being the target of conspiracy theories, but quickly became about a phenomenon that affects all of us. I will use the term misbelief to describe the phenomenon we’re exploring. Misbelief is a distorted lens through which people begin to view the world, reason about the world, and then describe the world to others. I derive a lot of satisfaction from seeing my work take shape in the real life and I take part in a few companies / startups. Among them are: Lemonade, Shapa, Irrational Capital, BEWorks, Epilog, Timeful, and Irrational Labs. I am also part of a team that is working on an NBC TV series that is loosely based on my life and will premiere on NBC in the fall of 2023. The show is called “The Irrational” and officially it is based on my first book, Predictably Irrational.
Read full bioDan Ariely- Predictably Irrational
Becoming a star in the controversial academic discipline of behavioral economics is not for the faint of heart.
Battle lines were drawn nearly four decades ago when innovative thinkers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and Richard H.Thaler challenged traditional economic dogma with their theories about the unpredictable impact of human behavior on tried-and-true economic models. Treading on the sacred ground of mainstream economics set off an intense controversy and inter- and intra-disciplinary sniping that has continued unabated ever since.
For Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and author of the best-selling “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” (Harper, 2008), a little testy debate about his work pales in comparison to his own remarkable odyssey. An Israeli who was born in New York City but raised in Ramat HaSharon, a small city just north of Tel Aviv, Ariely welcomes combative discourse with the relish of someone who has endured tougher battles.
When Ariely was 18, just after he had joined the Israeli military, he was at a meeting in a room filled with munitions when a magnesium flare, the kind used to light up battlefields at night, inexplicably ignited. The explosion left him severely burned over 70 percent of his body.
After an agonizing three-year hospital stay, countless surgeries and skin grafts and a painful struggle to heal, Ariely re-entered a world that had become alien and inaccessible. He had to relearn the mundane aspects of life, like how to step into a bath and to reconnect as a social being. Instead of succumbing to self-pity, he returned to academia and discovered the initial precepts of his career. Today, the 43-year-old Ariely retains what he describes as his Israeli combativeness, along with a wry sense of humor and unflappable balance. His ordeal fueled a deep introspection about his own psychological makeup and a fasc
Translating tragedy into empirical insight
Introduction
Dan Ariely is a psychologist and behavioral economist, and one of the most influential academics currently working in his field. With three New York Times best-selling books and several highly-viewed TED talks to his name, he is known not only for his wide-ranging and incisive research but also for his accessible communication style and his sense of humor.
Ariely’s work, which spans many concepts from pain tolerance to financial decision making, has challenged some of the most basic assumptions of traditional economics, and shone a light on the systematic irrationalities of human behavior. His research has implications for individuals (How can we commit to healthier habits? How do we avoid irrational decision making?) as well as for society as a whole (How do we make work more fulfilling? How do we address wealth inequality?).
*The Decision Lab has collaborated with Dan Ariely in the past, when he served as an advisor for our work with the World Bank in Uganda. You can find out more about that project here.
I do believe that an improved understanding of the multiple irrational forces that influence us could be a useful first step toward making better decisions.
– Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in Israeli-American professor of psychology and behavioral economics (born 1967) 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. He is the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science. Ariely wrote an advice column called "Ask Ariely" in The Wall Street Journal from June 2012 until September 2022. He is the author of the three New York Times best selling books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. He co-produced the 2015 documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. In 2021, a paper with Ariely as the fourth author was discovered to be based on falsified data and was subsequently retracted. In 2024, Duke completed a three-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". Ariely's life, research, and book Predictably Irrational inspired the NBC television series The Irrational; it premiered on September 25, 2023. 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 emigrated to Israel when he was three years old. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon. 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. In his writings entitled "Painful Lessons", Ariely Dan Ariely
Family and personal life