Quotes from Dan Ariely

It is true that from a behavioral economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So from this perspective it is rather depressing. But at the same time there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches!

Money is all about opportunity cost. Every time you spend on something, that's something you can't spend on something else.

We need to believe that we're good people, and we'll do just about anything to maintain that perception.

Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.

It is helpful to think of people as having two fundamental motivations: the desire to see ourselves as honest, good people, and the desire to gain the benefits that come from cheating - on our taxes or on the football field.

While we somehow understand revenge on an intuitive level between individuals, I do suspect that companies, assuming that people are rational, completely miss and underestimate the motivation people have for revenge.

I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them?

The experiments show quite clearly that, as you resist more and more temptation, you're actually more and more likely to fail.

In life we encounter many people who, in some way or another, try to tattoo our faces.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

The idea that you will make the right decision every time is very unlikely.

Disasters are usually a good time to re-examine what we've done so far, what mistakes we've made, and what improvements should come next.

Once you break the social norm and create a new social norm, all of a sudden it can stay with us for a long time.

Not all debt is bad. From time to time we should get into debt when there's a good reason for that.

Rainy day savings are incredibly important, because from time to time, bad things happen. And if you're not prepared for that, it's going to be really terrible.

The people who need to overcome temptation to the highest degree have the hardest time doing it.

We should teach the students, as well as executives, how to conduct experiments, how to examine data, and how to use these tools to make better decisions.

Honesty is a complex and tricky thing, and we don't want to be honest all the time.

When you're in pain, tomorrow doesn't exist - just the pain - and the only thing that you want in the world is for it to go away.

If you ever go bar hopping, who do you want to take with you? You want a slightly uglier version of yourself. Similar ... but slightly uglier.

Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.

The most difficult thing is to recognize that sometimes we too are blinded by our own incentives. Because we don't see how our conflicts of interest work on us.

People are willing to work free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage; but offer them just a small payment and they will walk away.

In a world where everyone is behaving honestly, any dishonesty constitutes a big infraction. But, in a world where many people are behaving dishonestly, and the news is filled with stories of their infractions, even big infractions can feel small to the perpetrator.