Dan Ariely's Blog, page 63

In Chapter 6 of "The Upside of Irrationality" I wrote about the the process of adaptation, which is the process by which we get used to stuff — like pain, romantic partners, and new cars.

Some of the personal experiences and experiments I described were about how experiencing pain when I was hospitalized caused me (and others) to view pain differently and with a lower intensity.

A new study on back pain, showed the basic same results:

"This study of 396 adults with chronic back pain found that t...

By Alon Nir

0. Intro

Sometimes interesting opportunities can emerge from unfavorable situations. Tense diplomatic atmosphere between Israel and Turkey in the past couple of months, brought on a cyber-attack from the Turkish side. A major Israeli apartment-listing website was hacked and so was Pizza Hut's local website. The credentials of over 100,000 user accounts (roughly 2% of internet users in the country) were revealed and published on dubious Turkish forums. Naturally, it wasn't long...

A few days ago I had a fun interview with Miguel Barbosa.  Miguel just posted the interview on his blog.

Here is one sample question and answer:

Miguel: You touched on my next question which relates to your chapter on meaning.  Tell us about your findings on the importance of meaning in the workplace. What's your advice for people trying to attach meaning to their jobs?

Dan: I think it's very hard to have meaning if you are working for someone and don't have much autonomy.  But the upside is ...

A few weeks ago we conducted an online study on this question (the link to the survey was the "Click to participate" on the right side of the screen), and I wanted to thank the participants and tell you a bit about what we found.

In this study all the participants viewed a potentially funny video involving an individual who would seem to have "issues." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sd-j0...) The video clip showed a college student getting upset in an arguably overdramatic fashion after...

This is a short video from a talk I gave on June 7th at the Booksmith in SF.

The question here, is who cheats more and who cheats less….

Before you watch the video, think about a country that you have family or social links to (not the US) and ask yourself if people in that country cheat more or less than Americans.

A) People in that other country cheat more than Americans

B) Americans cheat more than the people in that other country

Next, try to predict if you think that bankers cheat more than ...

Here is an email that I got last week from a financial planner:

Dear Dan.

My hourly model lets clients use whatever retail custodian they like.  For various reasons, I tend to recommend the two best as Vanguard and Fidelity.  I go over the pros and the cons for each and, as soon as I mention Fidelity gives 25,000 frequent flyer miles, most clients stop me and choose Fidelity.  Some will move tens of millions to Fidelity in order to get frequent flyer miles that might have a $200 economic value ...

There are a few topics that Mother Teresa and Joseph Stalin agreed on, other than the cause for human apathy. So I suspect that both would be surprised – as I am — about the reaction to the BP oil spill.

If six months ago someone were to describe to me a tremendous oil spill and ask me to predict our collective reaction to it, I would have said that we would be highly interested in this disaster for a week or two and, after that short time, our interest would dwindle to "mildly interested."...

You might remember reading in Predictably Irrational that it turns out that when we are choosing between two or more very similar options, we tend NOT to take into account the consequences of not deciding. For example, in the parable of the donkey, the unfortunate creature is placed in the middle of two identical stacks of hay. Unable to decide which stack to go for, the donkey starves and dies.

In another example, a friend of mine spent three months choosing between two different cameras...

1.) What is behavioral economics? How is it different from standard economics?

In general, both standard and behavioral economics are interested in the same questions and topics.  The choices people make, the effects on incentives, the role of information etc. However, unlike standard economics, behavioral economics does not assume that people are rational. Instead, behavioral economists start by figuring out how people actually behave, often in a controlled lab environment in which we can...

We have a new fun study that we need some help with….  So if you have 10 min please click the "Click to participate" button on the right..

Or, just follow this link.

Thanks

Dan