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Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality

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Dan Ariely: Is the Prius Eco-Friendly, or Ego-Friendly?

03 min 52 sec

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"If you wanted to design a problem that people would not care about, it would basically look like global warming," says The Upside of Irrationality author Dan Ariely. His proposed solution? Manipulate variables people care about to solve problems, like their egos.
Dan Ariely Asks Who Cheats More: Bankers or Politicians?

02 min 15 sec

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Dan Ariely describes an experiment he conducted to test the relative prevalence of cheating in various countries and cities.

After revealing that bankers in New York cheated more than congressional staffers on Capitol Hill, Ariely quips: "They're junior politicians...more research is needed."
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01 hr 08 min 58 sec

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There are 9 comments on this program

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Previous FORAtv comments:

TreeLuvBurdpu

Posted: 09.14.10, 10:55 PM

Yes but Goldman/Sachs was playing by a playbook which was written by... politicians.

irturtle

Posted: 07.23.10, 02:43 PM

@amu Let us know your results. However, a caution to the idea, "In Haifa, at six day care centers, a fine was imposed on parents who were late picking up their children at the end of the day. Parents responded to the fine by doubling the fraction of time they arrived late. When after 12 weeks the fine was revoked, their enhanced tardiness persisted unabated." This illustrates a "negative synergy" between economic incentives and moral behavior. "The fine seems to have undermined the parents' sense of ethical obligation to avoid inconveniencing the teachers and led them to think of lateness as just another commodity they could purchase." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bowles_(economist )

CulturalEngineer

Posted: 07.17.10, 06:08 AM

Altruism's True Nature & Proximity

These issues have more profound effect on a scaled civilization than most people realize. The problems related to the boundaries of biological altruism and proximity issues (physical, social, psychological, etc.) suggest that the downside may well exceed any upside without remedial systems, policies and technologies. Compensation and the Social Network Personal Democracy: Disruption as an Enlightenment Essential Ayn Rand & Alan Greenspan: The Altruism Fly in the Objectivist Ointment How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (pssst... They Do!) The Problem in Scaling Altruism: Where's the Intelligent Life?

Fora2

Posted: 07.16.10, 06:57 PM

(continued) BTW, Goldman Sachs just agreed to pay a $half-billion dollar SEC fine. LOL!!! They're laughing all the way to their $Bonus checks.

Fora2

Posted: 07.16.10, 06:08 PM

Bankers & Wall Street have been getting away with cheating so long they don't even think it's cheating anymore. Just look at Goldman Sachs. They were selling Mortgage Securities to their own investors with FAKE S&P Ratings and thought it was perfectly OKAY! "Fiduciary Duty", what's that???

marco mauas

Posted: 07.14.10, 08:25 AM

Dan Ariely's message is essentially what Freud called a Witz, a very paradoxical and successful one, if we consider "successful" as one that gets the point causing us laugh on the very message it is supposed to transmit. Everything people accept to carry on as a task is based in Ego (even if "good Ego")considerations. Prius is an Ego thing, everyone seems to agree. But the Witz, the joke, is that there is some kind of blind predictability there, in narcissism. That is the point where people are predictable. that is statistics, and that seems to be the reason why the word "people" is so frequently used by Ariely. But the laughter is also an opened window to the unpredictable, to the encounter. Does Ariely enjoy his work? Or does he more than all enjoy the laugh? In that case, he doesn't give a damn for the serious part of his own message. he laughs at himself and also at us all. We agree with him here. We are not so predictable, we may contradict, suddenly, Ego-laws. In any moment.

jjenkins

Posted: 07.13.10, 08:13 PM

I agree that the Prius is an ego thing. However, I do believe that we all have the power right now to make a difference. If everyone just drove a vehicle with a 4 cylinder engine, not even a hybrid, we could make a significant difference. Even if you love having your big truck or SUV, at least purchase another vehicle with a 4 cylinder (or less) engine and use it for your everyday commutes. This would go a tremendous way in reducing CO2 emission as well as saving million of barrels of oil.

amu

Posted: 07.12.10, 10:35 PM

I just got a brilliant stroke of insight listening to this lecture! I am from India, and if you have traveled or lived in India you will not miss the ubiquity of trash everywhere. People have tried explaining away this mess to our culture etc etc. But it hardly helps. The trash still remains. The Solution!!! Most of the trash is packaging material,used batteries and stuff like that. To prevent trash accumulating we can charge the customer a little bit extra on the products they buy. They will be reimbursed the extra money once they turn up the empty packaging. Even if a person is too lazy to return his used packaged water-bottle there will be enough people who will do it for the monetary incentive. Hence we would get a clean India! As a proof of concept, i intend to try it out on a pilot scale. I live in the campus of IIM Bangalore. It has 3 stores selling grocery items.If we label all the grocery items in the shelf with "Clean Campus" Sticker. All items brought from the stores will be charged Rs 2/- extra. If they return the package they will be refunded the amount. Lets see how this works out!

Biodiversivist

Posted: 07.12.10, 09:35 AM

The author is right about global warming. If we are going to create sustainable technology it will be a side effect of status seeking behavior. He uses the term ego instead of stature but essentially they are the same thing. I predict that electric cars will eclipse the Prius as a status symbol, and electric cars will create an explosion of solar panel installations to deflect criticism that they are charged by coal fired power plants. Unlike attic insulation, solar panels are highly visible and would make very good status symbols. Biodiversivist