Dan Ariely: The Irrational Man

Dan Ariely received his first B in the second grade.

When his mother asked him about the mark, he replied that he could either toil away for an A or do absolutely no homework and get a B. At the tire-swinging, worm-eating age of seven—a time when “recess” easily trumped rhetoric—Ariely articulated an astute and rational argument. Impressed by his precocious response, his mother did not push the discussion further. In fact, she gave him her full support, preaching the importance of making one’s own trade-offs in life.

“My childhood was generally very flexible, not very rule-oriented, and also with a lot of autonomy,” said Ariely, the James. B. Duke professor of behavioral economics.

Ariely, who was born in New York and moved to Israel when he was very young, only returned to the United States for graduate school, which he completed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later at Duke.

Ariely has distinguished himself as one of Duke’s most famous professors with the publication of two New York Times best-sellers, Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, on top of a flurry of scholarly papers. With the publication of Predictably Irrational in 2008, Ariely emerged as an academic who speaks to the masses.

While economics tells us how people should behave, behavioral economics takes no stand, Ariely explained. Behavioral economists reason that though they can’t predict how people will act, they can study behavior like a science by putting people in different situations and observing how they react. If people behave rationally, that’s fine. And if people behave irrationally, this is important to know, because economics is not just a field that attempts to describe behavior—it also strives to proscribe behavior. Behavioral economics takes a different approach.

“For me, as somebody who is trying to fix people’s bad behavior, it’s about thinking about where people are likely to fail and how we might want people to fix it,” Ariely said.

Ample freedom and independence were not the only quirks that characterized the researcher’s early life. When Ariely was four, his mother, a parole officer for juvenile delinquents, offered a favor to a young woman who would be sent to jail unless she found a job: She hired her to be her son’s nanny. The nanny went on to name her firstborn after Ariely.

“That was a real satisfying experience of figuring out that if you do have a question about something in life, there is a way to figure out if you’re right or wrong. And there are some things that people are wrong about systematically and you can tell them about it,” he said. “Going back to the burn department and saying, ‘Hey, I told you so,’ was very satisfying. That got me hooked.”

Ariely admits that he was never a good student growing up—he was typically the kid daydreaming and doodling in the back row. But in college, he faced an entirely new set of challenges. With pressure bandages covering everything but his eyes, mouth and ears, his experiences were severely limited. He could not eat lunch with other students in the cafeteria because of the mask covering his face. With skin still too sensitive for the sun, he could not sit on the grass and socialize with his classmates. He couldn’t even hold a pen to write.

“No one could really see me under the mask of the pressure bandages,” he said.

Two things came from the pain. Unable to write, he was forced to listen and finally came to enjoy his classes. Aware of the way he looked in the eyes of his peers, he felt a deep need to prove his intelligence.

“Usually when people are injured, I think there is an automatic assumption that they are also retarded,” Ariely said. “You assume that physical ability is somehow correlated to mental capacity.”

Ariely quickly transformed into a scholar, a lively and engaged student. Class participation became a way he could tell people, “I’m still normal, I can think, I’m still sensible,” he said.

As his academic career progressed, Ariely’s biggest challenge was learning to write about his research in a non-academic way.

“I didn’t know how to write about my research in a way that would be fun and not generalized,” he said, noting that he spent more than four months with his book agent, trying to figure out exactly how to write Predictably Irrational.

After speaking with Sandra Blakeslee, a science writer for The New York Times, Ariely decided to make the methods the hero.

“[Blakeslee] said that what she always loved about my research was the methods… Actually how I am doing the experiment,” Ariely said. “In most academic papers, the method is actually the most technical part. But this is where the details really are, and this is where the mystery really is.”

In his second book, Ariely described the technique of “the identifiable victim effect,” which involves taking one person’s story and using it to gain the reader’s empathy and understanding. Ariely said the strategy of explaining the detailed methods of his scientific papers through these identifiable victims has enabled him to describe his research in an easily comprehensible way.

Today, Dan Ariely is a name known across the academic community and around the world. He has been praised for his deep understanding of human behavior, extensive knowledge of behavioral economics and talent for communicating complex scientific findings to readers with innovative simplicity.

On average, Ariely receives one or two invitations to speak each day and has only had six travel-free weeks since Feb. 19, 2008, the day Predictably Irrational was published.

“I travel an unbelievable amount, far more than I had ever imagined,” he said. “Right now, I’m traveling way too much for my own preferences.”

In addition to his overwhelming travel schedule, Ariely—whose elaborate, color-coded iCal could give a passer-by an anxiety attack—also runs his research lab, teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses and serves as an advisor at the Fuqua School of Business.

“Dan wants to know what your passions are, and he tries to figure out tasks or experiments that conform to those,” said Sam Iglesias, a research associate for Ariely. “[The work environment] is very laid back… to kind of inspire your creativity and encourage the free flow of ideas.”

Yet of his countless responsibilities, exploring new and interesting research questions remains his passion.

“Teaching is not as much fun as learning,” he said. “Even as a teacher, you want to learn from your lectures. I like getting people to think and thinking with them.”

Ariely’s fascination with learning and research infuses all facets of his life. Ideas come to him not from reading academic papers, but from meeting people or trying to understand the day’s headlines.

“I think he’s one of those researchers that gets ideas from life,” said Megan Hogerty, Ariely’s assistant. “So I think the fact that he’s having more experiences and probably meeting people he wouldn’t have met in the past, he’s just generating research ideas a lot quicker and thinking of things that he maybe wouldn’t have thought of before.”

Ariely believes the principle challenge in research is coming up with game-changing ideas.

“In some sense, ideas are cheap,” he said. “Everyone has interesting ideas [about] interesting things.”

At the end of the day, the dilemma for Ariely is not how to generate questions, but determining which questions deserve his time. Brainstorming sessions are an integral component of the creative process for his team, which is currently juggling about 20 projects.

One way Ariely tests the research waters is through his blog, which received more than three-quarters of a million visitors last year. Interestingly enough, he only began writing his blog a month before Predictably Irrational came out—simply because people told him he should. Since then, his blog has not only contributed greatly to his success but also helped him include his fans in his research. In addition to a link for readers to participate in his studies, he now also tests new research ideas on his blog, often in the form of polls.

“For me, it is really a beautiful, collaborative effort,” he said. “I actually feel very indebted to my blog readers.”

Ariely may succeed in balancing family and academia because the two are so tightly linked for him. He and his wife Sumi, student projects coordinator for the Duke Global Health Institute, were hired by the University at the same time three years ago.

“Couples in academia are very tough because how do you get both people to be happy?” he said. “The cardinal rule of marriage is that no one can be happier than their spouse… Duke did a very nice thing and interviewed both of us.”

Despite the constant traveling and his roles as a professor, researcher, author and blogger, Ariely manages to find time for his family. A typical day in the life of Ariely (when he is home) is curiously normal—he gets up at 7 a.m., wakes up his eight-year-old son (who hates getting up that early) and makes him breakfast while Sumi and their four-year-old daughter stay in bed a little longer. He then drives his son to school and arrives at Fuqua a few minutes after 8.

Writing has been a central part of his routine for years now. Before his first best-seller hit stores, his plan was to author a cookbook called “Dining without Crumbs: The Art of Eating over the Sink.” His interest in cooking is evidenced by the diverse collection of cookbooks lined up atop his wooden office bookshelves. It was going to be a book that analyzed the kitchen as a metaphor for life, addressing questions like how to pick equipment for the kitchen, how to decide what to cook, how to clean up and how to prepare a meal for others. The book idea was motivated, in part, by his strong desire to write about his research in a non-academic, easy-to-understand way.

Unfortunately, no one wanted to publish it—although everyone said it was “very cute,” he was eventually told that if he really wanted to sell this cookbook, he needed to first write a book on his research. Predictably Irrational was born. Many thousands of copies later, he is returning to the original dream, working steadily on the cookbook and hoping to once again prompt readers to take a fresh look at the way they lead their lives.