Dan Ariely Quotes

One of the big lessons from behavioral economics is that we make decisions as a function of the environment that we're in.

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.

Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.

Your immediate environment is comprised of coffee shops, supermarkets, websites, apps and all kinds of things - none of which have an interest in your long-term or short-term financial well-being.

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

Companies, however unintentionally, choke the motivation out of their employees.

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.

Brands communicate in two directions: they help us tell other people something about ourselves, but they also help us form ideas about who we are.

Thinking is difficult and sometimes unpleasant.

There's something about [cyclically] doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.

The major thing that holds you back when you're trying to change a bad habit like eating, smoking, or drinking too much is your belief you are out of control.

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

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

A very simple bad decision is to get into debt. And that is very expensive.

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.

But because human being tend to focus on short-term benefits and our own immediate needs, such tragedies of the commons occur frequently .

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.

People are irrational - and predictably so.

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.

With everything you do, in fact, you should train yourself to question your repeated behaviors.

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.

The retail industry has its own headache: it loses $16 billion a year to customers who buy clothes, wear them with the tags tucked in, and return these secondhand clothes for a full refund.

The problem with opportunity cost is that opportunity cost is divided among many, many things.

I don't know what exactly the translation is but when we do consume something now, something else has to give at some point.

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

None of us always make the best financial decisions.

But suppose we are nothing more than the sum of our first, naive, random behaviors. What then?

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

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.

The real issue is, how much goodwill do you invest in the work? And goodwill is not something that we can buy with money. It's very hard to buy goodwill with money.

The more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips.

I think we could get people to both be more productive and happier. We're less productive as individuals. We're less productive as companies, and we're more miserable.

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.

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

It was shocking to realize how many low-income Americans don't have savings accounts.

The problem is that people basically dangle debt in front of us. And the cost for the poor of course is much higher than for the wealthy.

When you get a checking account, you should have a savings account, and the number for the savings account should be one off of your checking account.

When people are in severe pain, there's an expression, you're a "pain person," and what that means is that nothing else matters.

That’s a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity.

individuals are honest only to the extent that suits them (including their desire to please others)

What people do is they pay the small loans first. Why? Because they enjoy making the number of loans smaller. But of course it is a very ineffective way to pay debt down.

What you should do is wait until the end of each month, and then say, "OK, how much money do I have? How much do I need? Let me send the rest to retirement."

that when given the opportunity, many honest people will cheat.

When parents have college savings accounts for their kids, their kids show higher social and cognitive performance.

Once we start thinking of ourselves as polluted, there is not much incentive to behave well, and the trip down the slippery slope is likely.

Why would you take money out of your paycheck at the beginning of the month when you don't know how much money you'll need?

Motivation, basically getting people to be happy at work, everybody - everybody benefits.

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

What reminds you in your environment about saving? Nothing.