Dan Ariely | |
|---|---|
 Ariely in 2019 | |
| Born | (1967-04-29)April 29, 1967 (age 58) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Cognitive psychology (PhD) Business administration (PhD) |
| Alma mater | Duke University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Tel Aviv University |
| Known for | Behavioral economics |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | Duke University Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | James Bettman John G. Lynch Jr. |
| Website | danariely |
Dan Ariely (Hebrew:דן אריאלי; born April 29, 1967) is anIsraeli-American professor and author. He serves as aJames B. Duke Professor ofpsychology andbehavioral economics atDuke University. He is the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science.[1] Ariely wrote an advice column called "Ask Ariely" inThe Wall Street Journal from June 2012 until September 2022.[2] He is the author of the threeNew York Times best-selling booksPredictably Irrational,The Upside of Irrationality, andThe Honest Truth about Dishonesty. He co-produced the 2015 documentary(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies.[3] Ariely's life, research, and bookPredictably Irrational inspired the 2023 NBC television seriesThe Irrational.[4]
Since 2010, several of Ariely's statements and papers have received criticism regarding their reproducibility or reliability. In one case, a paper was retracted due to falsified data. Duke University has so far declined to comment on Ariely's culpability. In 2026, it was revealed that Ariely had a longstanding relationship withJeffrey Epstein.
Dan Ariely was born to Yoram and Dafna Ariely inNew York City while his father was studying for anMBA atColumbia University. He has two younger sisters. The family emigrated toIsrael when he was three years old. He grew up inRamat Hasharon.[5]
In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active inHanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While he was preparing aktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causingthird-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body.[5] In his writings entitled "Painful Lessons", Ariely described his hospitalization and treatments, detailing how that experience led to his research on "how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients".[6][7]
Ariely was previously married to Sumedha (Sumi) Gupta in 1998; they have two children.[8]
Ariely was a physics and mathematics major atTel Aviv University but transferred to philosophy and psychology. However, in his last year, he dropped philosophy and concentrated solely on psychology, graduating in 1991. In 1994, he earned a master's degree incognitive psychology and a Ph.D. two years later from theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed a second Ph.D. in business administration atDuke University in 1998, at the urging ofDaniel Kahneman.[5][9] Ariely taught atMIT between 1998 and 2008, where he was theAlfred P. Sloan professor ofbehavioral economics.[10] In 2008, he returned to Duke University as theJames B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics. His laboratory at Duke, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money,decision making by physicians and patients,cheating, andsocial justice.[5]
In 2008, Ariely, along with his co-authors, Rebecca Waber,Ziv Carmon, andBaba Shiv, was awarded anIg Nobel Prize in medicine for their research demonstrating that "high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine".[11]
In 2006, when he was a professor at theMIT Media Lab, Ariely conducted experiments including administering electric shocks with a research assistant who had no human–subject training.[12] As a consequence, MIT's ethics committee banned Ariely from supervising data collection for a year.[13] Ariely confirmed this and said that he wasn't aware that the research assistant did not have the needed one-hour online human–subject training.[14][15]
In 2010, Ariely toldNPR in an interview that data fromDelta Dental, an insurance provider, showed that dentists frequently (with a probability of "about 50 percent") misdiagnosed cavities when analyzing X-rays, and he speculated that this might happen so that dentists could charge more money.[16] A Delta Dental spokesperson denied collecting data that could support such a claim.[17] Ariely maintained that he was told about the finding by a Delta Dental medical officer.[18] This was confirmed in a 2024 article inThe Chronicle of Higher Education.[19]
In 2021, a 2012 paper written byFrancesca Gino,Max H. Bazerman, Nina Mazar, Lisa L Shu, and Ariely was discovered to be based on falsified data and was subsequently retracted.[20][14] In 2024, Duke completed a three-year confidential investigation, and according to Ariely, concluded that "data from the honesty-pledge paper had been falsified but found no evidence that Ariely used fake data knowingly".[21][22][23][24][25][26] However, this claim has not been corroborated by other sources, and Duke University has so far declined to comment on Ariely's culpability.[27]
In July 2021, the journalPsychological Science challenged a 2004 paper by James Heyman and Ariely, "prompted by some uncertainty regarding the values of statistical tests reported in the article and the analytic approach taken to the data".[28] The authors were unable to resolve the ambiguities, because the original participant-level data was no longer available. A follow-up analysis, and a letter to the editor by Gregory Francis from the Department of Psychological Sciences,Purdue University, demonstrated that the problem in the paper could be a simple reporting error in whicht-statistics were reported asF-statistics by mistake. Francis also showed that this error does not negate the findings in the original article.[29]
In November 2022, the Israeli TV investigative showHamakor (Channel 13), aired an episode[30][31] questioning a number of Ariely's studies that were not reproducible or whose reliability was dubious in terms of the way they were carried out, the data collected, or whether the studies were carried out at all. For example, Ariely claimed that data for his "Ten Commandments" study were collected in 2004–2005 at UCLA with the assistance of Aimee Drolet Rossi. However, despite being thanked in the 2004 paper for collecting the data almost 20 years later, Rossi denies having run the study,[32][33] and UCLA has issued a statement that the study did not take place there.[32]
On January 30, 2026, theUnited States Department of Justice released a tranche of around 3,000,000 documents from an archive previously collected by theFBI in relation to their investigation intoJeffrey Epstein's various child sex crimes. It revealed that Ariely had a longstanding relationship with Epstein.[34] One of the documents is an image of an email from Ariely to Epstein, in which he requests the name and email of a "redhead" that Epstein had previously introduced to him.[35][36][37]
Early in his career, Ariely co-founded the behavioral economics consulting firm BEworks, which was acquired by Kyu in 2017.[38]
In 2012, aspiring to develop a time management app that helps people "use time better" and avoid procrastination, Ariely co-founded Timeful with Yoav Shoham and Jacob Bank.[39][1] The app was acquired by Google in 2015.[1]
In 2013, Ariely and Kristen Berman co-founded Irrational Labs, a consulting firm aimed at applyingbehavioral economics toconsumer behavior anddecision-making.[40]
In 2014, Ariely co-founded the kitchen appliance company Genie with Ayelet Carasso-Stenberg and Doron Marco.[41] Genie manufactures a food "replicator" that cooks freeze-dried meals in cartridges.[42]
In 2015, Ariely invested inQapital, a personal finance app, and was appointed as its chief behavioral economist.[43] He was later named chairman of the board.[44]
In 2016, he took on the position of chief behavioral officer at Lemonade, an insurance company that integrates aspects of behavioral economics into its insurance model.[43][45]
Ariely's entrepreneurial ventures also include founding Shapa in 2017, a company focused on health monitoring and behavior change.[46]
Ariely has appeared in several documentary films and television productions.
In 2011, he worked on the documentaryThe Flaw, which investigates the causes of the2008 financial crisis. In it, Ariely explained and presented scientific data on the forces that shape human behavior, motivation, and decision-making.[47][48]
In 2015, Ariely appeared in another documentary,(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. It explores three key themes: why people lie, how often they do it, and the consequences of dishonest behavior.[49]
Ariely contributed toBoom Bust Boom, a 2015 documentary about economic crashes.[50]
In 2019, he appeared inThe Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, a documentary that tracks the rise and fall ofTheranos.[51]
In 2022, he contributed toWhy Like This? Lama Kacha, a Hebrew television series broadcast onKan 11. In it, Ariely distilled complex scientific concepts and provided accessible explanations for the forces that shape human behavior, motivation, and decision-making.[52]
Ariely has also presented talks at severalTED, with titles such as "Our Buggy Moral Code" and "Unraveling the Mysteries of Human Behavior".[53][54]
From June 2012 to September 2022, Ariely contributed a weekly advice column titled "Ask Ariely" toThe Wall Street Journal.[55]
Ariely's life, research, and best-selling bookPredictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions inspired the NBC television seriesThe Irrational,[56][57] which premiered on September 25, 2023.[56][58] The show's protagonist, Professor Alec Mercer, who is portrayed byJesse L. Martin, was based on Ariely.[59][21]
Directed by Yael Melamede and released in 2015,(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies is a documentary film exploring dishonesty in contemporary society.[60] Ariely presents the film, offering analysis on the psychological mechanisms that drive deceit. With references to behavioral experiments and anecdotes—from athletic and academic cheating to political scandals—Ariely draws on his research on behavioural economics and irrationality to shed light on why and how people lie. Numerous people make appearances in the documentary, including the author and marketerRyan Holiday, to share their personal experiences with dishonesty and lies.[61]
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