Dan Ariely

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“A World Without Irrationality Would Have No Help, Altruism, Caring, Love”

March 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who focuses a great deal of his work on irrationality and lying, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

What has been your favorite social experiment to try on a college campus and which experiment has changed your opinion on a certain topic the most?

Dan Ariely:

Probably the vaccination experiment — they took a group of students and gave half of them information about the importance of vaccination, but also gave the other half directions to the health center and asked them to indicate a time in their calendars that they would show up. Amazingly, the information did very little but the map and schedule was very effective at getting people to show up and get vaccinated. For me, this is an important building block — providing people with information is not very useful, and we need to change the environment to facilitate better decision-making.

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Question:

Do you believe people are selfish rather than altruistic? (not sure how to ask this as not to suggest an answer). Is it meaningful to ask this question and to what extent do you believe this has to do with the threat of punishment rather than trying to act in accordance with moral principle?

Dan Ariely:

I believe that people are deeply altruistic, and selfishness comes later. One piece of evidence for this is that we have some data showing that when people are drunk, they react more extremely to injustice — even at a cost to themselves.

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Question:

Not to name any public personalities on the spot, but there is a slew of self-help books/speakers/retreats – in other words, a multi-billion dollar industry out there that operates on making people believe that they can profoundly change themselves. In my own case, personal shortcomings like procrastination for example, how likely is it that someone in her 50s can still successfully tackle these types of personal problems? In other words, is the self-help industry a hoax? Is is irrational to expect change on a deep level?

Dan Ariely:

There is clearly a demand for self-help, and it is a very interesting industry. To look into this, I went to a 3-day event with Tony Robbins and one with the Landmark Forum. In each, there was some grain of scientific evidence but they were building giant castles from these grains of sand. I also saw lots of pain in these meetings, and people who were dealing with very complex problems. And it upsets me that these organizations are selling them the “answers” at such a high cost.

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Question:

What would happen if the whole world behaved rationally? What would have existed that we don’t have today?

Dan Ariely:

I would hate to live in this world. A world without irrationality would have no help, altruism, caring, love. Count me out.

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Question:

What is the most common irrational human act that you come across?

Dan Ariely:

Having kids.•

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“I Didn’t See The Gorilla”

August 27, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“It turns out very few people saw the gorilla.” (Image by Kabir Bakie.)

From a Five Books interview at the Browser with behavioral economist Dan Ariely, a passage about The Invisible Gorilla, which demonstrates that we see more with our brains than our eyes and that our brains are often “blind”:

“Let’s go through the books, and you can tell me what’s important about them and why you like them. The first one on your list is The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

These are the guys who did one of the most important pieces of research in social science, which is to show how little we actually see in the world around us. The basic demonstration of this is a movie in which there are two groups playing basketball. One group is wearing white t-shirts and the other group is wearing black t-shirts. They are passing the ball, and the viewer is asked to count how many times the people in white t-shirts pass the ball to each other. What then happens in the background is a gorilla passes through. He stops right in the middle and thumps his chest. When the clip is over, the viewer is asked, “How many times did you see the people in white t-shirts pass the ball?” Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. But when you ask, ‘How many of you saw the gorilla?’ it turns out very few people saw the gorilla.

I didn’t see the gorilla.

There’s also another demonstration in the book that I really like. This involves going up to someone on a campus with a map and saying, ‘Excuse me, can you help me figure out how to get to the student centre?’ They take the map from your hand and start explaining it to you. While they’re explaining, two people in workmen’s clothes come between you with a door. For a moment, they obscure your view. What the person you’ve asked for directions doesn’t know is that you’re going away. You’re walking off with the door and a new person is standing in front of them. The question is, do people notice this change? And the answer is, again, no.

These are findings that are incredibly powerful and important. We think we see with our eyes, but the reality is that we largely see with our brains. Our brain is a master at giving us what we expect to see. It’s all about expectation, and when things violate expectation we are just unaware of them. We go around the world with a sense that we pay attention to lots of things. The reality is that we notice much less than we think. And if we notice so much less than we think, what does that mean about our ability to figure out things around us, to learn and improve? It means we have a serious problem. I think this book has done a tremendous job in showing how even in vision, which is such a good system in general, we are poorly tooled to make good decisions.”

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“Everybody Has The Capacity To Be Dishonest, And Almost Everybody Cheats”

May 28, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a new WSJ piece, behavioral economist Dan Ariely looks at how almost everyone is duplicitous and how widespread small-scale cheating aggregates to trump Madoff-sized indiscretions. An excerpt:

“We tend to think that people are either honest or dishonest. In the age of Bernie Madoff and Mark McGwire, James Frey and John Edwards, we like to believe that most people are virtuous, but a few bad apples spoil the bunch. If this were true, society might easily remedy its problems with cheating and dishonesty. Human-resources departments could screen for cheaters when hiring. Dishonest financial advisers or building contractors could be flagged quickly and shunned. Cheaters in sports and other arenas would be easy to spot before they rose to the tops of their professions.

But that is not how dishonesty works. Over the past decade or so, my colleagues and I have taken a close look at why people cheat, using a variety of experiments and looking at a panoply of unique data sets—from insurance claims to employment histories to the treatment records of doctors and dentists. What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats—just by a little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating, not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society.”

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