I’m excited to announce my first foray into interactive online discussion with readers. On Tuesday August 28 at 6 pm you can join me in a discussion of The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty, and of course, whatever else comes up. Sign up here.
Hi, I’m Dan Ariely. I do research in behavioral economics and try to describe it in plain language. These findings have enriched my life, and my hope is that they will do the same for you.
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
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The Upside of Irrationality, explores some positive and some negative ways that irrationality plays out in our lives.
When we make decisions we think we're in control. But are we?
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Predictably Irrational App
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Dan,
Amazon won’t let me buy the Kindle version of the Honest Truth, it says it’s under review, and it’s been that way for at least a fortnight. Any idea when it’s going to be fixed?
Hi!
The page in Eventbrite doesn’t allow to sign up either; maybe both links are planning some conspiracy…
Einat
Says event “ended” …?
With recent events surrounding Jonah Lehrer, this event is all the more poignant.
Also, 6 p.m. what time zone? Eastern, Central, Mountain, or Pacific?
The Eventbrite and Shindig sites both say 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT.
I registered!!
and I’m going to plug Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon
Dan, I could not find a forum to respond to you BBC article.
So I am doing it here:
My take is that the author are right, that Americans want a balanced society.
But I find myself frustrated by what seem to be an intentional biasing in the way you framed this problem. I feels to me that you understood which calculation was the most honest, and the one that would yield results that would fit your biases, and you chose the latter. Enlighten me, if I am wrong on this.
If we are really measure how “good each segment has it” then a better measure of each bucket is not their investible income, but rather their TOTAL income, or their TOTAL spending.
After all the reason we care about how much someone saves, is because it implies how much they can spend and will spend on themselves—e.g. how good they have it.
But measuring income, or better, measuring spending, is a more direct measure of that… and of course if we compare these across the 5 buckets the difference will be dramatically less stark. We will not see the lower two buckets accounting for only 0.3% of the whole pie. But then you know that.
So I think it is a great exploration, I just wish we had actually compared how good each segment has it relative to how good we think each segment should have it.
But maybe it was not gunning for a result that guided your thinking? But then what? You are a deep thinker, so these distinctions must have been clear in your mind.
Interested to hear you thoughts…
Hi Dan,
I cannot make it to your online discussion as the site is blocked from me at work. However, I do have some thoughts I want to share.
It occurs to me that when people engage their “personal fudge factor”, it is often because they want to appear to be more acceptable to some group. I have seen research bemoaning the fact that survey respondents will misrepresent their opinions in order to appear to be a better citizen (social desireability distortion). Likewise, I have often administered surveys in which employees have misrepresented their opinions in order to appear to be a better employee (corporate desireability distortion).
After reading your first two books, logic would suggest that people are willing to lie (engage that personal fudge factor) to gain the acceptance of any number of groups (e.g. peer groups, management within a company, a bunch of friends, family, etc.). That is, one’s personal fudge factor is a tool that is leveraged to make one feel more accepted.
A personal fudge factor lie makes me feel more compliant with company policy, cool in front of my friends, in control in front of my family, etc.
Perhaps the message that leads us to shrink our personal fudge factors is to realize that being a little “uncool” or slightly less compliant is not a bad thing (even when prevailing culture tells us otherwise), but rather an indication of creativity that occasionally leaves us outside of life’s boundaries.
Chuck Raby, D.M.
Survey Services Lead
Staff Operations Researcher
Lockheed Martin EBS, Survey Services
Operations & Process Management
10285 Federal Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80921
Phone: 719-277-4302
Facsimile: 719-277-9588
I am having a difficult time connecting to Shindig on my mac. I’ve tried different browsers – Chrome, firefox, Safari, and am having difficulties. Sarfari let me on for a brief period, but I was sitting in an empty space, listening to the echoes of the turning pages of my notebook, and my cat’s disgruntled meows.
Great discussion! Thank you very much Dan!
I missed the discussion… i was excited about it, but i guess there’s a big difference in time, now it’s 11h00 am here
hi could not get up in the middle of the night (australia) – can u podcast it?
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