Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist and psychologist born in New York in 1967, though some sources give 1968. He grew up in Israel, where he was educated, and now teaches at Duke University. He is among the best-known figures in behavioral economics, a field that studies how people actually decide, in contrast with the perfectly rational agent of classical economics.

In his final year of high school he was seriously injured in an accident with a magnesium flare during a youth movement ceremony, suffering burns over much of his body. The experience sparked his interest in how we perceive pain and how patients should be treated. He started out in physics and mathematics at Tel Aviv University, moved to philosophy and psychology, and eventually focused on psychology. He earned a doctorate in cognitive psychology at the University of North Carolina and later a doctorate in business administration at Duke. He worked at MIT from 1998 to 2008 before returning to Duke. His popular books, including Predictably Irrational and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty, gather experiments on everyday irrationality.

His central ideas cluster around three themes. The first is that the value we place on things depends on arbitrary anchors and external cues, such as a starting price or the appeal of something free. The second is dishonesty: he argues that we balance the wish to see ourselves as honest against the wish to profit, and that cheating comes more easily when the reward is not cash. The third concerns work motivation: money is a double-edged tool, helpful for simple tasks but capable of distracting from work that demands thought.

His influence reaches marketing, management and public debate, and his work inspired a documentary and a television series. Since 2021, however, several of his studies have been questioned. Two papers have been retracted, and replication failures and allegations of data manipulation have been reported, prompting a reassessment of how much of his work holds up.