Dan Ariely's Blog, page 67

Here is the cover of my new book. Look for it June 1, 2010!

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Inspired by Valentine's Day "Mine" is a short story by sportswriter Patrick Dorsey about the steps that lead, or don't lead, to a new relationship.  Featured in this story are the Behavioral Economic principles of virtual ownership and the self-fulfilling prophesy.

Read the story here….

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I am not a serious athlete, but I do like playing squash from time to time.  What I mostly like about squash is that it is a game of strategy, where each player tries to build an advantage over multiple shots.  First you get your opponent to run to the right, then you get them to run to the front left … and as the game progresses, they (hopefully) get behind the ball, their shots become worse, until at some point it is possible to finish the point!  Of course when you are the one that runs...

Finally, after a long time I got a new placebo — thanks to my mother.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What a relief…

Predictably Irrational was published two years ago today

Mazal Tov

It has been an amazing two years

Dan

Paul Samuelson, the influential and famous economist died not too long ago.

Here is a short video about one meeting I had with Samuelson

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more on Samuelson, see this Wikipedia

A few weeks ago, the New York Times announced that they would start charging readers for online content in early 2011, and since then the million-dollar question has been: will it work? Will readers fork over the cash to keep reading the Times, or will they go elsewhere?

The main problem of this approach is that over the years of free access, the New York Times has trained its readers for years that the right price (or the Anchor) is $0 – and since this is the starting point it is very hard...

I have "a friend" who will head over to a coffee shop to get work done. Not because she's unable to work at her desk or because she needs the presence of other people, but rather because it lets her get away from the Internet and all its distractions.

True, she could easily stay put by just keeping her browser closed. But that requires self-control, and as we all know, keeping ourselves in check is easier said than done. Whatever the resolution (start dieting, start saving, stop...

A few months ago I posted four short stories that undergraduate students in my class wrote.

In response to these stories, some readers proposed their own short stories, and today I am posting the fist of these:

Here is "Five Sundays," By Jamey Stegmaier

We have lots of discussions about how to get people to save more, which is clearly important.

But today I want to ask a question about spending money: Assume you had $20,000 to spend (and that you could not save it), what would be the ideal way to spend it?  In other words, what would be the way to spend this sum if your goal was to get the most joy and happiness out of this amount?

I am not asking because I have an answer, or even an idea of how to do research on this — I am asking because I r...