Dan Ariely

About

Dan Ariely is a Professor of Business Administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. His research focuses on behavioral economics, specifically on the irrational ways people behave, which he describes in plain language. His interest in irrationality was sparked by his personal experience of overcoming injuries sustained in an explosion, during which he observed irrational behaviors in medical treatments. This led him to investigate how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients. Ariely's work explores how individuals repeatedly and predictably make wrong decisions in many aspects of life, and he believes that research can help change some of these patterns. He has authored several books, including 'Irrationally Yours,' 'Predictably Irrational,' 'The Upside of Irrationality,' and 'The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty,' aiming to communicate his research findings to a broader audience. His efforts include a movie titled 'Dishonesty' and a card game called 'Irrational Game,' both designed to make behavioral economics accessible and engaging for the general public.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Internal medicine
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Emergency medicine
• Nursing
• Intensive care medicine
• Family medicine
• Physical therapy

Selected publications

• Effect of a Hospital and Postdischarge Quality Improvement Intervention on Clinical Outcomes and Quality of Care for Patients With Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction

  JAMA · 2021 · 142 citations

  Importance: Adoption of guideline-directed medical therapy for patients with heart failure is variable. Interventions to improve guideline-directed medical therapy have failed to consistently achieve target metrics, and limited data exist to inform efforts to improve heart failure quality of care. Objective: To evaluate the effect of a hospital and postdischarge quality improvement intervention compared with usual care on heart failure outcomes and care. Design, Setting, and Participants: This c…

  DOI

• Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 92 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  = 1,235) conducted with the authors of the original paper, we observed no effect of signing first on honest reporting. Given the policy applications of this result, it is important to update the scientific record regarding the veracity of these results.

  DOI

• It’s how you say it: Systematic A/B testing of digital messaging cut hospital no-show rates

  PLoS ONE · 2020 · 53 citations

  Failure to attend hospital appointments has a detrimental impact on care quality. Documented efforts to address this challenge have only modestly decreased no-show rates. Behavioral economics theory has suggested that more effective messages may lead to increased responsiveness. In complex, real-world settings, it has proven difficult to predict the optimal message composition. In this study, we aimed to systematically compare the effects of several pre-appointment message formats on no-show rat…

  DOI

• Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2024-10-21 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Harnessing dehumanization theory, modern media, and an intervention tournament to reduce support for retributive war crimes

  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · 2023-11-25 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  We demonstrate how psychological scientists can curate rich-yet-accessible media to intervene on conflict-escalating attitudes during the earliest stages of violent conflicts. Although wartime atrocities all-too-often ignite destructive cycles of tit-for-tat war crimes, powerful third parties can de-escalate the bloodshed. Therefore, following Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, we aimed to reduce Americans' support for committing retributive war crimes against Russian soldiers. To intervene d…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21ES02104102

  NIH · $196k · 2014

• NIH Grant R21ES021041

  NIH · $236k · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• Nina Mažar

  57 shared

• Janet Schwartz

  53 shared

• Francesca Gino

  Harvard University

  40 shared

• Michael I. Norton

  39 shared

• Joel Huber

  33 shared

• George Loewenstein

  32 shared

• Thomas Emerick

  LEK Consulting (United States)

  26 shared

• Nortin M. Hadler

  26 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  1994

• M.S., Psychology

  Carnegie Mellon University

  1991

• B.S., Psychology

  Tel Aviv University

  1988

Similar researchers at Duke University

• James Bettmanh-70
• Ravi Bansalh-67
• Alon Bravh-57