DAN ARIELY IS PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL
It’s rare for me to meet someone who’s an absolute mastermind—IQ, EQ, the whole genius package—and not feel like the ground beneath my feet is shifting. And yet chatting with Professor Dan Ariely, one of the world’s leading thinkers in behavioural economics—a guy who’s invented systems to disrupt some of the most pervasive, deep-rooted behaviours we exhibit—had a remarkably grounding effect. This is the kind of genius who not only discerns and extrapolates to the nth degree; it’s one who democratises intelligence, making complex, high-level thinking anyone’s business.
Dan’s TED Talks have amassed more than 10 million viewers and asked questions like, “Are we in control of our own decisions?” and, “How equal do we want the world to be?” His lab, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, does all kinds of fascinating empirical research into human behaviour—particularly when it comes to money, health and the planet—and then uses it to tackle complex socio-economic problems. At the heart of Dan’s experiments is the premise that humans are irrational, that we can’t always predict how someone is going to behave in a given situation. And so we need to design clever systems that eliminate the opportunity for mistakes—eg. eating the doughnut you really shouldn’t eat—so we’re better equipped to serve ourselves and the world around us.
As we talk, Dan uses case study after case study to illustrate the forces at play that limit our freedom and choice-making capabilities. “Think about Android Pay and Apple Pay,” he says. “Are they going in the direction of getting people to think more carefully about money? No. Their vision is that you’ll shop online and never think about money again.” He’s an encyclopaedia of insight when it comes to the effects of standard, business-as-usual economics on human behaviour and potential, as he holds a mirror of broken glass up to the layers of unconsciousness that our capitalist economy perpetuates.
He also illuminates our natural proclivities for dishonesty and cheating when conflicts of interest arise, showing us how better behaviour can be fostered when the right structures are in place. Which is of course Dan’s overarching belief and mission: change the system first and a better version of humanity will follow. For most, that seems an impossible task, but not Dan. Observant as he is provocative and assured, he’s just the kind of genius this world needs now, one who can show us the root cause of our problems while making sure we see the potential they hold as well.
NATHAN SCOLARO: So it’s incredible the research you’re doing into human behaviour and I wanted to start by getting a sense of where you locate this curiosity in your own experience and whether this is something that stems from childhood?
DAN ARIELY: So I don’t know what you know about me but when I was about 18 I got badly burned. And I was in hospital for a very long time, almost three years. And as you can imagine that was a very defining time of my life. One of the reasons is that I? I wanted to figure out if we could do things better. In a less painful way, a more respectful way. In a way that allowed us to sleep more hours. I mean, you name it. There’s a million ways to treat patients slightly better. And I really think in that time I became a kind of social engineer. I started wanting to change things to make things better. To help people, to help people function better. And I actually think that I’m more of a social engineer than a scientist. I think that good scientists have this curiosity for curiosity’s sake. They say they want to understand procrastination or hyperbolic discounting or whatever it is. For me It’s not a judgement on one approach or the other. Just for me that’s a reason to study this. So I look at the human condition and see lots of very sad things, things that I say, “We should have done this better.”
