Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality

Nice presentation based on Dan Ariely's recent book, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. He is the author of the very interesting book from 2008, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (now available in paperback).

You hear him frequently on public radio -- now meet the incomparable Dan Ariely when he introduces his new book The Upside of Irrationality!

The 2008 economic crisis taught us that irrationality is an influential player in financial markets. But it is often the case that irrationality also makes it way into our daily lives and decision-making -- in slightly different and vastly more subtle ways. In this enthralling follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely shows how irrationality is an inherent part of the way we function and think, and how it affects our behavior in all areas of our lives, from our romantic relationships to our experiences in the workplace to our temptations to cheat.

Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking analysis and new research into our how we actually make decisions, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Using data from original experiments, he draws invaluable conclusions about how -- and why -- we behave the way we do, and reflects on ways we can make ourselves and our society better.

Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group.

He is considered to be one of the leading behavioral economists. Currently, Ariely is serving as a Visiting Professor at the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business where he is teaching a course based upon his findings in Predictably Irrational.

Ariely was an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.

Ariely is the author of the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which was published on February 21, 2008 by HarperCollins.

Tags: brain, Psychology, culture, decision-making, irrational, Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality, Unexpected Benefits, Defying Logic, Work, Home, FORA.tv, 2008 economic crisis, expectations, emotions, social norms, illogical forces, reasoning abilities