I just posted a fun new study (should take about 2 min).

If you’d like to take it, press on the “click to participate” button on the right

I will post the results next week

Thanks in advance

Dan

We just created a new facebook game called “Friend Measure”

The basic idea is that once a week we will post a question.  The question this week is:

Would you date your friend’s ex a month after they broke up?

After you answer the weekly question, we ask you to pick some of your friends and predict how they will answer the same question. Next, they will be asked to answer the question (and also predict your answer).

After you and your friends have answered the question, you will get one score of how well you know your friends in general and other scores of how well you know each of your friends (and how well they know you).

Looking forward to your feedback, and if you want to suggest questions that we should ask in the weeks to come just send the suggestions to irrationallyyours@gmail.com

“Friend Measure”

Dan

Dear Readers,

And as always, many thanks for all your help.

Dan

Thanks to all the people who participated in the probabilistic promotion for “The Upside.”

The average response to “would you buy this book without this promotion was 72% (on a 100% scale), and the average response to “would you wait longer was 62% (on a 100% scale). This means that this promotion worked mainly for people who were going to buy the book anyway at some point. But, there seems to be a substantial group that would have not purchased the book without this promotion.

There were people from all over the US, and some from outside the US — and the winner that was selected at random is from Washington DC.

I hope this was fun for everyone, and if you have any other suggestions for creative promotions, let me know — I am happy to try more things.

Irrationally yours

Dan Ariely

Recently Nina Mazar and I have been playing with the idea of probabilistic discounts.  The basic question is whether people would prefer a fixed discount of X% (lets say 10%) over a fixed probability X% of paying nothing for the product (lets say 10% chance of paying nothing).  So far it seems that probabilistic discounts are a huge hit.

So – I decided to try a type of probabilistic promotion for my second book (“The Upside of Irrationality”).  Here is the deal:

If you buy “The Upside of Irrationality” in any version (physical, e-book, enhanced e-book, or audio) between now and Nov 20^th, keep your receipt, follow this link, and fill in your information.

If you are selected (at random) I will invite you to have dinner with me (now, is this a positive or negative experience?)

Interested?

p.s I travel so much that I am sure we can find a time and location that would work well.

This is a short video from a talk I gave on June 7th at the Booksmith in SF.

The question here, is who cheats more and who cheats less….

Before you watch the video, think about a country that you have family or social links to (not the US) and ask yourself if people in that country cheat more or less than Americans.

A) People in that other country cheat more than Americans
B) Americans cheat more than the people in that other country

Next, try to predict if you think that bankers cheat more than politicians or if politicians cheat more than bankers.

C) Bankers cheat more than politicians
D) Politicians cheat more than bankers

Now if you don’t mind post your 2 answers to Twitter together with the name of the country that you have selected. Please use my username (@danariely), and I will collect the responses from Twitter.

Now, you can watch the video and get the answers

You might remember reading in Predictably Irrational that it turns out that when we are choosing between two or more very similar options, we tend NOT to take into account the consequences of not deciding. For example, in the parable of the donkey, the unfortunate creature is placed in the middle of two identical stacks of hay. Unable to decide which stack to go for, the donkey starves and dies.

In another example, a friend of mine spent three months choosing between two different cameras, only to miss countless photo opportunities that he will never get back. And given how similar the two cameras were, he might have been better off simply flipping a coin.

To remedy this situation, I had the idea of creating Procrastinator for iPhone. This application allows you to set deadlines for your hard decisions so that when time is up, if you haven’t chosen an option, Procrastinator chooses for you. Thus, no more endless deciding back and forth, and no more lost time. Procrastinator is really easy to use, and you can have as many decisions as you would like running at the same time. You can find Procrastinator here.

Update:  Thanks for everyone who participated in this study — we will post the results next week

————————————————————————-

We have a new fun study that we need some help with….  So if you have 10 min please click the “Click to participate” button on the right..

Or, just follow this link.

Thanks

Dan

On Friday July 9th at 1:30 PM EST I will have an online office hour on Duke’s Ustream channel.to discuss The Upside of Irrationality.

You can submit questions in advance or during the session by email to live@duke.edu, on the Duke University Live Ustream page on Facebook or via Twitter with the tag #dukelive.

If this will work out maybe we will do more of these…

Irrationally yours

Dan

From the NYT Sunday Book Review:

STUFF YOUR BRAIN SAYS: “The Upside of Irrationality,” Dan Ariely’s follow-up to his 2008 best seller “Predictably Irrational,” hits the hardcover list at No. 12 this week. Ariely, a professor at Duke, is a leading researcher in behavioral economics. One of the field’s concerns is the way we tend to misjudge future pleasure — for example, by imagining that a new Ferrari will make us feel much happier than it actually does. But making The New York Times best-seller list, it turns out, really does feel good. “When my first book reached the list, I called my wife to tell her and I was just not able to talk from excitement,” Ariely said by telephone. “This was very interesting to me because I was very happy to hear the news, but somehow sharing it with someone I love intensified it to an extent that was just too much for me, and I was just able to say a word here and there and almost cry in between.” The differences in our experience of emotions when we are alone versus with others, he added, might be a fruitful avenue for future research.

So — how did I feel this time?  About the same as the first time….

Irrationally yours

Dan