Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

—Francesca

Ah yes—the perils of success. Promotions usually sound good, but once we get them, we realize that they come with extra demands and annoyances.  We also don’t seem to remember this lesson from promotion to promotion, so every time, we’re surprised when we discover those extra obligations.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

—Matt

Yes and no.  Imagine that every day, I came to your office and covered your desk with doughnuts.  What are the odds that you will not weigh more by the end of the year?  Close to zero, I suspect. Once the environment is set, we are largely helpless, but we don’t have to be tempted by doughnuts every day: We can keep the doughnut peddlers out and otherwise design offices that help us make better decisions. That’s where free will resides—in our ability to design our environment for the better and make the world more compatible with our weaknesses.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

I’m happy to speculate about human nature, but predicting market trends should be left to those who divine the future from cards, coffee grounds and crystal balls (and to macroeconomists).  The only interesting thing I can tell you about real estate is that I once met one of the founders of Siri, Apple’s personal assistant, and he told me that he decided to work with Apple when Steve Jobs offered him the most valuable real estate in the world: the button at the bottom of the iPhone.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

A few days ago I got out of a meeting and couldn’t find my car keys. I suddenly realized that I must have left the keys in the ignition. I forgetfully do that from time to time, and my husband scolds me for it. Frantic, I headed for the parking garage, only to discover that the car was gone. I immediately called the police. I later called my husband and told him, “I left the keys in the car, and it’s been stolen.” There was a moment of silence. He said, “Are you kidding me? I dropped you off!” Embarrassed, I said, “Can you come and get me?” And his response was, “I’ll be there as soon as I convince this cop that I didn’t steal your car.”

Should I expect more moments like this as I start to pass into my golden years? Any advice on how to make it less painful? 

—Pat

Memory is a gift that we don’t sufficiently appreciate until we start losing it. But appreciating memory isn’t helpful in figuring out what you can do to decrease memory loss.

The best tools are habit and repeated behavior. You may no longer be able to remember easily where you left your glasses or book the last time you used them, but if you always try to put them in the same place, the odds are higher that you will find them. Rehearsal is also useful: Repeating things multiple times helps to transfer them from short-term to long-term memory (with the risk of looking crazy if people see you talking to yourself). Another tool is to take notes that will bypass the need to rely on memory (aside from remembering to look at your note pad). A modern version of such notes is to use your phone to take pictures, which come with even more context around the item you are trying to remember.

Your story is highly amusing, so perhaps you can also try to see the funny side of these senior moments. In fact, if you can make a point of sharing them with your friends and family, you will benefit from remembering those happy moments, too.

______________________________________________________

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 now 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 loaned the money, you probably think that she ought to be the one to bring up the topic. The problem is that the asymmetry in your relationship makes it much, much harder for her to do this. Someone unquestionably should, though, and given the power dynamic I think it should be you. It might be a bit uncomfortable in the short run, but in the long run, it could save your friendship.

Next, the 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. 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 you knew I always meant it as a gift.”

Either way, the topic would be out, and you would have a better chance to resume your friendship.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

Why is the divorce rate so high?

—Jacob

It is hard to imagine we can be happy with any decision even a year down the line, much less 10, 20 or even 50 years later. Frankly, I am amazed by how low the divorce rate is.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

How can we get people to follow their long-term strategies when investing in the stock market? Many of my clients say they’re willing to take risks, but when the market goes down, they change their minds and ask me to sell. How do I get my clients to stick to their game plans and not break their own rules?

—Ganapathy

I suspect that you are asking about is the so-called “hot-cold-empathy gap,” where we tell ourselves something like, “I can handle a level of risk where I might get gains of up to 15% and losses of up to 10%.” But then we lose 5% of our portfolio, panic and want to sell everything. In such cases, we usually think that the cooler voice in our head (the one that set the initial risk level and portfolio choice) is the correct one, and we think that the voice that panics at short-term markets fluctuations is the one causing us to stray.

From this perspective, we can think about two types of solutions. The first option is to get the “cold” side of ourselves to set up our investments in ways that are hard for our “hot,” emotional selves to undo in the heat of the moment. For example, we could ask our financial advisers not to let us make any changes unless we’ve slept on them for 72 hours. Or imagine what would happen if our brokerage accounts had a built-in penalty every time we tried to sell right after a market dip. Such approaches recognize that our emotions flare up and make it harder for us to act on them.

A second option: You could try not to awaken your emotional self, perhaps by not looking at our portfolio very often or by asking your significant other (or financial adviser) to alert you only if your portfolio has lost more than the amount you’d indicated that you were willing to lose.

Either way, the freedom to do whatever we want and change our minds at any point can be the shortest path to bad decisions. While limiting our freedom goes against our democratic ideology and faith in human nature, such tactics are sometimes the best ways to guarantee that we stay on the long-term path.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

My boyfriend and I keep having terrible fights, with lots of verbal and emotional abuse on both sides. After each of these fights, we really hate each other. But a few days later, we become loving again—until we have another awful blowup after a few more days. I keep hoping that things will change and that these fights will stop. Am I being naive, or can people change?

—Amy

I’m sorry — this sounds very painful. You may be experiencing the ostrich effect: burying your head in the sand despite the accumulating evidence. Of course, this is hardly unique to your difficult situation. We all sometimes overestimate very small probabilities — hoping against hope that the real nature of the world (and people close to us) will be different from what we’re experiencing.

It is not easy to overcome the ostrich effect, but here’s one approach: Distance yourself from the situation and try to take “the outside view” — the perspective of someone not personally involved in this problem. For example, imagine that someone else was having this exact problem and described it to you in great detail. What advice would you give them? What if the person was someone close to you, like your sister or daughter?

Take the outside view, make a recommendation to this other person—and then follow your own advice. And good luck.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

What’s the best way to get people to stop smoking?

—Myron

The problem with smoking is that its effects are cumulative and delayed, so we don’t feel the danger. Imagine what would happen if we forced cigarette companies to install a small explosive device in one out of every million cigarettes—not big enough to kill anyone but powerful enough to create a bit of damage. My guess is that this would stop smoking. And if we can’t implement this approach, maybe we can get people to start thinking about smoking this way.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

For my birthday, my boyfriend gave me a rather expensive coupon for tandem sky diving. I could have used the coupon that weekend, when the sky diving season ended, but I chose instead to wait a few months for the new season to begin. My thought was that I’d be braver in the future and somehow mentally prepare myself. But can someone really prepare for something like this?

—Kinga

When we think about experiences, we need to think about three types of time: the time before the experience, the time of the experience and the time after the experience. The time beforehand can be filled with anticipation or dread; the time of the experience itself can be filled with joy or misery; and the time afterward can be filled with happy or miserable memories. (The shortest of these three types of time, interestingly, is almost always the time of the experience itself.)

So what should you do? In your case, the time before your sky diving experience will certainly not be cheerful. The time of the experience will also probably not be pure joy. At a minimum, you’re going to ask why you are doing this to yourself. But the time after the experience is likely to be wonderful (assuming that you get out of this alive), and you will get to bask in the way you conquered your fears and relive the view of Earth from above.

So your best strategy was to make the time before the experience as short as possible. It is too late now, but you should have just gone sky diving the moment you got the coupon, which also would have signaled to your boyfriend how much you appreciated the gift.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

Early in my career, I wrote a massive Excel macro for the large bank where I worked. The macro (a set of automated commands) would take a data dump and turn it into a beautiful report. It took about two minutes to run, with an hourglass showing that it was working away. The output was very useful, but everyone complained that it was too slow.

One way to speed up a macro is to make it run in the background, invisibly, with just the hourglass left on-screen. I had done this from the start, but just for fun, I flipped the setting so that people using the macro could see it do its thing. It was like watching a video on fast forward: The macro sliced the data, changed colors, made headers and so on. The only problem: It took about three times as long to finish.

Once I made this change, however, everyone was dazzled by how fast and wonderful the algorithm was. Do you have a rational explanation for this reversal?

—Mike

I’m not sure I have a rational explanation, but I have a logical one. What you describe so nicely is a combination of two forces. First, when we are just waiting aimlessly, we feel that time is being wasted, and we feel worse about its passage. Second, when we feel that someone is working for us, particularly if they are working hard, we feel much better about waiting (and about paying them for their effort). Interestingly, this joy at having someone work hard for us holds true not just of people but of computer algorithms, too.

The life lesson should be clear: Work extra hard at describing how hard you work to those around you.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

During a recent hotel stay, I tried to resist temptation but gave in and bought a $5 bag of M&M’s from the minibar. I know from research on pricing that paying a lot for something often makes you experience it as especially wonderful—but that didn’t happen with the M&M’s. Why?

—David

Research does indeed show that higher prices can increase our expectations, and these increased expectations can spur us to more fully enjoy an experience. But there are limits. First, you have probably had lots of M&Ms in your life and have rather set expectations about how good they can be. Second, some high prices are just annoying.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

—Richard

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

What’s the best way to help low-income families improve their financial lives? One approach is “microsavings,” which are small deposit accounts that can be an incentive to save more for future goals. Research shows that these small, long-term accounts not only build assets but also promote the social and intellectual development of low-income children. In this podcast, I talk with Professor Michael Sherraden of Washington University in St. Louis about another concept of savings accounts called Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), and their potential impact on poverty in the U.S.

Listen to the podcast here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

I find myself acting irrationally when it comes to squirrels. The rascals climb down a branch and onto my bird feeder, where they hang and eat like limber little pigs. Then I rush outside yelling and take great pleasure in frightening them away. But victory never lasts long. They come right back, and the whole insane cycle starts over. My sister tells me I need to watch “Snow White” again, to be reminded that squirrels are also a part of nature and not inherently worse than the birds I prefer. Perhaps, but this theory doesn’t satisfy me. Can you help to explain what’s going on with my reasoning, and how I might make peace with the furry marauders in my yard?

—Nearly Elmer Fudd

It sounds to me that the root of your problem is that you view the squirrels’ behavior as an immoral theft from the right owners of this food, the birds. If so, why don’t you start calling the contraption a “squirrel and bird feeder”? With this new framing, your problems should go away, and you might even be able to market this new product.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

Do you think that colleges should continue teaching subjects like philosophy, sociology and literature? After all, they’re a waste of time and money.

—Clara

With something like computer science or statistics, we find it easy to assess what skills we will acquire and how we will use them in a practical way. But with sociology, literature or even psychology, it is not always exactly clear how our studies are going to change us. Are we going to learn how to think analytically or see things differently? And how valuable are these skills anyway?

Maybe it is worthwhile to think about education as a lottery ticket. After all, like a lottery, when it comes to academic education we don’t know exactly what we’re going to get, and we’re not 100% certain that our degree will always justify our investment. But what if for every year of studying you got one really good idea? Or if your education somehow improved your mental capacity by 10%? Think of your education as a lottery ticket that you get to use year after year for the rest of your life. Of course, it is hard to predict what exact benefits you’ll reap from good ideas or an improved mental ability, but if you think about education as a long-term bet, I suspect that you will easily see it as a bet with very high expected payoffs.

P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that as someone who teaches for a living, I have a vested interest in students continuing to attend universities. And maybe, in this case, it is hard for me to see the world from a different perspective.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

I was talking with a friend about your research on dishonesty, notably the way that people feel free to steal sodas and cookies from the “break room” but not cash. My friend said that office items such as staplers, tape dispensers and so on used to be constantly taken from his desk. He then glued a quarter onto each piece, and no one has taken anything with a coin on it for five years. Does this follow your findings?

—Tony

I love the application of this finding. Now, if we could only glue quarters to stock certificates and other financial products, maybe the world would be a better place.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

A normal day in our life might look like this: The alarm clock buzzes. We hit snooze twice and steal another 16 minutes. As we get into the office, yesterday’s work crisis weighs heavily on our mind, but instead we log in and check Facebook for a while. After that, we dip in and out of meetings, chase our inbox, and start on a project that is due in 48 hours. And at 7:15, right before walking out the door, 25 minutes later than planned, we grab a sugar cookie from the communal jar to accompany us on the drive home.

A version of this routine is likely to be part of our grim reality most days, but there is one very important exception. On Jan. 1 many of us make all kinds of promises that “starting tomorrow, things are going to be different.” There is the old (2013 self) and the new (2014 self), and Jan. 1 is an opportunity to welcome the new, improved self in. As the New Year starts, we say to ourselves that the new, 2014 self will be different. We’re confident that from now on we won’t hit snooze, we’ll stop procrastinating and for sure we won’t mindlessly eat unhealthy snacks.

This kind of self-resolve is the kind of magic that keeps mankind moving. Unfortunately, come mid-January, the shiny “new self” doesn’t feel as new. After a few weeks of crashing against reality and old habit, the new self is bruised and sainted.

Given these challenges, how can we take advantage of our good intentions on Jan. 1 and make them work for us throughout the year, or at least for longer than they would naturally last?

One simple answer is to take advantage of these moments of clarity at the start of the New Year and take actions that would commit us to making good decisions in the future. Much like Ulysses and the sirens, this way, even if our future will tempt us to misbehave, we will not be able to act on our temptations.

Where in our modern life could the Ulysses-style “tying ourselves to the mast” help? Here are a few ideas that might help you make Jan. 1, 2014, different from Jan. 1 of years past:

1. Order an annual subscription to the Fruit Guy. By committing to a weekly service that delivers fresh fruit, we make having healthy food a reality. This approach has the added sweet side effect of urgency. Every week when the fruit is delivered, we know all too well that if we fail to consume the fruit in the next week, more of it will show up and we will have to waste the unused fruit. And if you like real adventures, what about a more extreme version of this? A weekly subscription to the Kale Guy?

2. Give a good friend the ability to take some money from your bank account if you break your diet. Tell this friend that if he sees you eating something unhealthy, he should withdraw a specified amount of money from your checking account and spend it. And if you find that this is not sufficiently painful, either make the amount larger, or make the deal with someone you don’t like that much (maybe your boss).

3. Set up an automatic monthly transfer from your checking account into a savings account. This quick, onetime decision to transfer money will help you spend within your budget, while also helping your future financial security.

4. Working out every day takes a lot of ongoing willpower. Joining a gym is nice but still requires the daily decision to go to the gym. Instead, a better approach is to set up recurring weekly “meetings” with friends or co-workers for workouts. This kind of social obligation is likely to hold you, and them, accountable to show up, and once you have shown up, you might as well start sweating.

5. Go to the nearby shelter and get a dog. Once you make this quick onetime decision, you are going to go for daily walks for the next decade.

Doing all of these things would make Jan. 1 a very busy day. But, by doing these things when the desire to start fresh is still strong in our mind, there is a much better chance that our good intentions will keep serving us for the better part of 2014.

By Dan Ariely and Kristen Berman, reposted from Time here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

During a recent trip to Los Angeles, I stopped by a coffee shop offering a very expensive coffee called kopi luwak, or civet coffee. I asked about the steep price, and the barista told me the story of the special process required to make this coffee: A catlike Indonesian animal known as a civet eats coffee cherries and then poops out what are basically beans. People then collect these “processed” beans and use them to make a highly unusual brew that’s said to be smoother than its journey. It can sell for hundreds of dollars per pound. I was curious but not interested (or brave) enough to buy it—let alone drink it. Can you explain why are people willing to pay for this?

—Chahriar

First, I think you made a mistake. You should have paid up and tried a cup—in part because you are still clearly curious about it, in part because it would have made a much better story (and what are a few dollars compared to a good story?). So next time you pass by a coffee place with kopi luwak, try it—maybe even get the double shot with hair and all the trimmings.

As for civet coffee’s quality: The promotional material that I found says that civets know how to pick the best coffee beans and that their digestive systems ferment the beans, reducing their acidity and providing a much better coffee. (I have no idea how this works, but the story caught my curiosity too.)

So why are people willing to pay for so much for civet coffee? It’s probably for the novelty and the story—and because the amount (and type) of labor involved is clearly so much higher than your average cup of java. People are generally willing to pay more for something that required more effort to produce even if the product itself is not better—and civet coffee sounds like a prime example of this effort-based-pricing principle.

Finally, I wonder how much people would be willing to pay had the beans passed through not an Indonesian animal but an American human. My guess: That’s too strong a brew for any of us.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

Are financial advisors a wise investment? Mine charges me 1% each year for all my assets under their management. Is it worth it?

—Allan

It is hard to know for sure. But the fact that many financial advisers have different hidden fees suggests to me that they themselves don’t think that people would pay if they charged for their services in a clear and upfront way.

To help you think about this question in your own life, let’s contrast two cases: In case one, you are charged 1% of your assets under management, and this amount is taken directly from your brokerage account once a month. In case two, you pay the same overall amount, but you send a monthly check to your financial adviser.

The second case more directly and clearly depicts the cost of your financial adviser, providing a better frame for your question. So, put yourself in the mindset of the second case, and ask yourself if you would pay directly for these services. If the answer is yes, keep your financial adviser; if the answer is no, you have your first action plan for the New Year.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

Every year, when Christmas comes, I feel an obligation 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 

It is fine to send cards only to your good friends. I don’t think anyone left off the list will be offended, and you will also reduce their feeling of obligation to send you a card next year. And if you really want to eliminate the Christmas-card frenzy, there is always Judaism.

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.

Here’s my Q&A column from the WSJ this week — and if you have any questions for me, you can tweet them to @danariely with the hashtag #askariely, post a comment on my Ask Ariely Facebook page, or email them to AskAriely@wsj.com.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

A strange thing happened to me a few days ago. One of my employees came into my office holding a few lottery tickets and asked, “You in? It’s 45 bucks.” I never play the lottery, but I felt an inexplicable urge to say yes–and I did. Was I being grossly irrational?

—Itay 

You were indeed irrational, but in a very common way. Usually, when you are considering whether or not to buy a lottery ticket, you take into account how your life would change if you won and contrast this with the cost of the ticket and the slim chance of winning. After making this quick computation, you decide not to buy a ticket.

But when another person asks you to “go half” with them on a tickets that they’ve already purchased, another factor comes into play: regret. Now you can’t help thinking how you would feel if that other person won. You quickly conclude that it would make you feel terrible and you also realize that you would keep on thinking about this forgone fortune for a very long time.

I think that too many people are currently losing too much money on various lotteries (often state sponsored), and I wouldn’t want more people to keep losing money this way. But if I were looking for a way to get more people to gamble, I would certainly try to play on our capacity for regret.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

On a recent flight, the attendants declared it was “Breast Cancer Awareness” month and asked for donations from the passengers for this worthwhile cause. I give to a multitude of breast-cancer organizations, but this approach offended me. Maybe if the airline had offered to match my contribution dollar for dollar it would have made me feel we were partnering in this effort, but the way it was handled just annoyed me. Is it just me or were they doing this the wrong way and actually hurting the cause they are trying to help?

—Rob 

I suspect that many companies trying this approach to corporate responsibility don’t get much of a boost from it in terms of internal morale or customer loyalty. It turns out that companies get the most credit for donating to charity in two cases: One is when they give first and then tell the customers, “Look, we’ve already given on your behalf, now you can contribute as well.” The second is when they empower their customers to give themselves (“here is a $5 voucher for you to give to any organization you value”). The approach you describe, where the company simply says, “We have a charity that we like and want you to give to it,” is ineffective in every way.

______________________________________________________

Dear Dan,

It seems to me that any reading of social science research implies that we are all less capable in making our own decisions and that as a consequence we need help. Yet, it seems that Americans are emotionally against any hint of paternalism. Any idea how we can overcome this barrier?

—Tom

I agree with your general position. I think that part of the problem is that, while we see irrationalities and bad decision-making in those around us, we don’t see these mistakes as readily in our own behavior. Because of this partial blindness, we are not as interested in limiting our freedom to make our own stupid decisions. I’m not sure what we can do to fix this part of the problem. But perhaps we can think about how to market paternalism in a better way. As a first step, I would change the term and call it maternalism. After all, who could object to listening to a mother figure?

See the original article in the Wall Street Journal here.