by Dan Ariely
Dedication
To the oddities, complexities, and beauty of human nature
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
Based on “Ask Ariely” column in The Wall Street Journal
On Escalation of Commitments
On the Art and Joy of Saying No
On Netflix Dissatisfaction
On Dieting
On Forgotten and Forgiven Loans
On Marriage and Economic Models
On Social Networks and Social Norms
On Kopi Luwak Coffee
On Wedding Ring Woes
On Social Violations and Tattle-Telling
On Variety as a Memory Enhancement
On the Benefits of a Crowded Space
On Hiring a Good (and Free) Advisor
On the Garlic Effect
On Giving to the Poor
On Grandparents and Agendas
On Outsmarting Bathroom Goers
On Gossip as a Social Coordination Mechanism
On Friends with Benefits
On Ruminating While Running
On the Joy of Getting Things Done
On the Art of Multitasking
On Calling Home
On Toasts and the Ideal Superstition
On Pickup Lines and Compliments
On the Illusion of Labor
On Misery and Shared Humanity
On Flashy Cars
On Dressing Down
On Exploring the Unknown
On Trying Out Relationships
On Divorce and Good Decisions
On Investing in Financial Advisors
On Justice and Sharing Food with Squirrels
On Social Life and the Internet
On Expectations in Dating and Hiring
On Learning to Be Better Decision Makers (Maybe)
On the Power of Expectations
On Communicating Safety
On the Perfect Gift
On Eating Lessons and Kids
On Useful Complaining
On Prices and Bidding Frenzy
On Transmission of Stress, and Caring for the Old
On Luck as a Multiple-Stage Number Game
On Socks and the Psychology of the Supernatural
On Tithing
On Midlife Clichés
On Cheaters and Alibis
On Breakfast Regrets
On Nighttime Activities
On Playing Parents
On Joint Accounts
On the Bordeaux Battlefield
On Traffic Jam Altruism
On Idle Waiting
On Forcing Decisions with Coins
On Trashy Norms
On Making Smoking Feel Dangerous
On Adventures as Investments
On the Quality and Not the Quantity of Irrationality
On “Helping” People Retire
On the Morality of Correcting Mistakes
On Who We Are and Who We Want to Be
On the Value of Splitting Checks
On Staplers and Quarters
On Taking Time for Exercise
On Memory
On Books and Audiobooks
On Souls and Pascal’s Wager
On Showing Off the Price
On Topics and Teachers
On (the Lack of) Self-Control
On Three Building Blocks of a Balancing Act
On Wasting Time Deciding
On Buffet ROI
On Asking the Right Questions
On Doughnuts and the Locus of Free Will
On the Most Optimistic Day of the Year
On Emotional Investing in the Stock Market
On Commuting and Adaptation
On Riding Your Dryer to Tucson
On Promotions and the Illusion of Progress
On Distance from Emotion and Caring
On Predicting Happiness
New Questions and Advice
On the Curse of Knowledge
On Bad Sex
On Mice and Markets
On Letting Loose
On Shrinking and Honesty
On High Heels
On Rules as a Way to Overcome Negative Signals
On Taxes and Mitzvahs
On Bull Service
On Loss Aversion and Sports
Acknowledgments
Categories
About the Authors
Also by Dan Ariely
Credits
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
Here is a possible rationalization: My ability to observe and reflect on human nature is rooted in my injury and its continuing effects—thanks to being ripped out of my teenage life, sustaining third degree burns on about 70 percent of my body, being hospitalized for almost three years, experiencing substantial daily pain, experiencing over and over the dysfunction of the medical system, and having extensive scars that make me feel out of place in most social circumstances. Combined, these elements (so the rationalization goes) have made me a better observer of life. It is also what brought me to study social science.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think that my injury was worth it. No one can rationalize this much pain and misery. But the complex experiences of my injury, time in the hospital, and life with extensive scars and disabilities have been my microscope on life. Through this perspective I have been able to observe substantial human suffering. I have seen people who managed their suffering and triumphed, and I have seen those who caved in. I have been exposed to different medical procedures and odd human interactions. From the distance of my hospital bed, I was able to observe the people around me go about their normal life, to wonder about human habits, and to speculate about the reasons we act the way we do.
Because of my scars, the pain, some odd-looking medical braces, and the pressure bandages that covered me from head to toe, the feeling of living separately from the normal day-to-day life did not stop when I left the hospital. As I made my first steps back into the reality that I once took for granted, my viewpoint expanded to include more mundane daily activities such as the way we shop, drive, volunteer, interact with coworkers, take risks, fight, and behave thoughtlessly. And, of course, I could not help but notice the intricate fiber that governs romantic life.
With this perspective, I turned to study psychology. Very soon my personal and professional life became deeply intertwined. I remembered placebo medications for pain, and I conducted experiments to better understand the effects of expectations on painful treatments. I remembered some of the bad news I got while in the hospital, and I tried to figure out how best to break bad news to patients. There were many other topics that crossed the personal/professional boundary, and over time I learned more and more about my own decisions and the behaviors of those around me. This was more than twenty-five years ago and since then I have dedicated most of my time to try to better understand human nature, focusing mostly on where we make mistakes and what can be done to improve our decisions, actions, and outcomes.
After writing academic papers on these topics for many years, I started writing about my research and its implications in a more conversational and less academic way. Perhaps because I described how my research grew out of my own difficult experiences, many people started sharing with me their personal struggles. Sometimes they were curious to know what social science can say about a particular experience they had, but most often these were questions about their own challenges and decisions.
While resp
onding to as many of these requests as I could, it became apparent to me that some of these questions were of general interest. And in 2012, with permission of the people asking the questions, I started answering some of the broader questions publicly through my Wall Street Journal column “Ask Ariely.” The book you are now holding in your hands includes some edited and expanded answers from the column in addition to some questions and answers that have not appeared previously in press. Most important, this book also includes some wonderful cartoons by the talented William Haefeli that, in my opinion, deepen, improve, and expand my answers.
Now you have it. Aside from my ability to rationalize, does any of this make my advice more valuable, accurate, or useful? I’ll let you be the judge.
Irrationally yours,
DAN ARIELY
ON ESCALATION OF COMMITMENTS
Dear Dan,
Every year, when Christmas comes, I feel obligated to send Christmas cards to everyone I know, and every year, the number of cards I send gets larger and larger. It is now officially getting out of hand. Can I switch to sending cards only to my really close friends?
—HOLLY
A few years ago I was ordained by the Church of Spiritual Humanism, so I feel that I am in the position to tell you that it is perfectly fine for you to send cards only to your good friends. As a social scientist, I don’t think anyone left off the list will be offended and many of them might not even notice. Taking this step will also reduce their feeling of obligation to send you a card next year—so in the process you are also helping them with the same problem. And if you really want to eliminate the Christmas-card frenzy, there is always Judaism.
Friends, Expectations, Happiness
ON THE ART AND JOY OF SAYING NO
“And once they’d finished everything on their to-do lists, they lived happily ever after.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
I’ve recently been promoted, and I now receive all sorts of requests for activities that have little to do with my love for my job. I recognize the importance of helping out coworkers and the organization as a whole, but these other activities are taking up too much of my time and making it impossible for me to do my job. How can I set my priorities better?
—FRANCESCA
Ah yes—the perils of success. Promotions usually sound good, but once we get them, we often realize that they come with extra demands and annoyances. (Oddly, we don’t seem to remember this lesson from promotion to promotion, so each time we’re surprised when we discover these extra costs.)
Back to your question. Here’s what I suspect your new life looks like: Every day, nice coworkers who you want to help ask you to do something for them. On top of that, the request is usually for some time that is far into the future—say a month from now. You look at your calendar and it looks rather empty, so you say to yourself, “Since I’m mostly free a month from now, how can I say no?” But this is wrong. Your future is not really going to be free; the details are just not yet filled in. When the day arrives, you will have all kinds of things to do and your plate will be overflowing—even without the extra demands of this request. And at that point you will wish that you hadn’t said yes.
This is a very common problem, and I would like to propose three simple tools that can help you better stick to your desired priorities.
First, every time a request comes in, ask yourself what you would do if it was for next week. Framed this way, you would look at your schedule and figure out if you would cancel some of your other obligations to make room for this new request. If you would cancel some things in order to make time, go ahead and accept. But, if you would not prioritize it over your other obligations, just say no.
As a second tool: When you receive a request, imagine that you look at your calendar to see if you can comply and you discover that you are fully booked that day without the ability to switch anything around—maybe you are out of town. Now, try to gauge your emotional reaction to this news. If you feel sad, you should go ahead and accept the request. On the other hand, if you feel relieved that you can’t do it, turn it down.
Finally, practice using one of the most beautiful words in English: “cancel-elation,” the glee we feel when something is canceled. To use this tool, imagine that you accepted this particular request but it later got canceled. If you can taste joy, you just experienced cancel-elation and you have your answer.
Workplace, Decisions, Long-Term Thinking
ON NETFLIX DISSATISFACTION
“If you had ten eggs in a basket and two fell out and broke, how sad would you be?”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
I am a longtime Netflix user. Recently, Netflix removed about 1,800 movies from its offering, while adding a few very good ones. I know I probably would have never watched any of those 1,800 movies but I am still upset about this and I am seriously considering leaving Netflix. Why do I feel this way?
—KRISTEN
As a movie fan myself, I appreciate your conundrum. The basic principle behind this emotional reaction to the elimination of these movies is loss aversion. Loss aversion is one of the most basic and well-understood principles in social science. The basic finding is that losing something has a stronger emotional impact than gaining something of the same value. Going back to Netflix, the implication is that having movies taken away from your account is perceived as a loss and because of that, it feels much more painful. The impact of loss aversion could be so strong that losing the not-so-great movies can still be more upsetting than the joy of getting movies that are objectively better.
One other implication of loss aversion is that while old Netflix users, such as yourself, will view the new collection of movies on Netflix in a somewhat negative and loss-aversive way, new users who just see the new set of movies without the experience of having anything taken away from them will view the updated offering in a much more positive way.
With this in mind, my suggestion is that you try to think about Netflix more like a museum. As a service that provides you not with particular movies but with an optimal, curated variety of entertainment. With museums, we don’t think about ourselves as owning any of the art, so we aren’t upset when the exhibits change. My guess is that if you manage to reframe your perspective this way, you will enjoy Netflix to a larger degree.
Entertainment, Loss Aversion, Value
ON DIETING
“I’m not eating. I’m self-medicating.”
{Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli}
Dear Dan,
This is probably a very common question, as everyone seems to be on a diet at some point. The question is: Why do we let the immediate pleasure of eating overwhelm our long-term considerations? Why do we sabotage our health over and over? And how can we tame our desire to eat and overeat?
—DAFNA
As you pointed out, dieting basically goes against our inherent nature. It’s often the case that we have fantastic ideals about our future selves. What we will do, what we will not do, what decisions we will make, and what decisions we will not make. But when it comes to our everyday decisions, often the short-term considerations prevail and our long-term hopes and wishes take a backseat (sometimes they even move to the trunk of the car). When we’re not hungry and someone asks us how many desserts we will eat over the next month, we might think that we will have one or maybe two max. However, when we’re at a restaurant and the waiter places the dessert menu (or even worse, the dessert tray) in front of us and we see our favorite dessert listed as an option, we get a very different idea about the importance of having dessert right now. We see the triple chocolate cake, and our priorities change. In behavioral economics, we call this “present-focus bias.”
On top of that, a diet is really a difficult thing to stick to—much more difficult than quitting smoking, for example. Why? Because with smoking, we are either smokers or nonsmokers. With dieting, we can’t easily separate o
urselves into eaters and noneaters. We have to eat, and so the question becomes: What do we eat and when exactly do we stop? And because there are no clear-cut stopping rules, it becomes very hard to stick to any particular diet.
So what can we do about this problem? The simplest approach is to realize the extent of this challenge, and try hard from the get-go to avoid exposing ourselves to the types of foods that are detrimental to our diet. If we have no cake at home, we’ll probably eat much less cake. And if we replace that cake with fresh bell peppers, we’ll eat peppers because they’re available. Maybe we can decide that dessert is just unacceptable. Or maybe that we can have dessert only on the Sabbath. Another useful and relatively simple rule is not to let any soft drinks and boxed snacks into our homes. Such an approach, of applying strict, religious-type rules to dieting, can be very useful. By adopting such rules we will be able to better recognize at any point if we are sticking to our long-term plans or not, and this should help us reinforce our desired behavior.
Dieting, Self-Control, Rules
ON FORGOTTEN AND FORGIVEN LOANS
Dear Dan,
Many years ago a friend of mine asked me to lend her a substantial amount of money. At the time I was happy to help her, but it has been years since I lent her the money, she has never mentioned it, and the shadow of this exchange is clouding our relationship. What should I do? Should I say something?
—MARIEL
Because you’re the one who did her a favor and loaned her the money, you probably think that she is the one with the obligation to bring up the topic. This might be true from a moral perspective, but the problem is that once you lent her the money, you shifted the power in your relationship, and this asymmetry is making it much, much harder for her to bring up the topic.
Someone unquestionably should bring this up, and given the asymmetrical power dynamics, I think it should be you.
Now that we have decided that you should bring it up, the next question is what to say. If you need the money, I would say something like, “A few years ago I was happy to loan you some money, but I’m trying to sort out my accounts in the next few weeks and I just need to know when would be a good time for you to repay me.” If you don’t need the money and are willing to give it to your friend, I would say something like, “A few years ago, you asked me for some money, and I just wanted to make sure that it was clear that I always meant it as a gift.”
