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DAN ARIELY Dan Ariely (born April 29, 1968) is an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight. Ariely’s talks on TED have been watched 2.8 million times. He is the author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which became New York Times best sellers. Dan Ariely was born in New York City while his father was studying for an MBA degree at Columbia University. The family returned to Israel when he was three. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon. In his senior year of high school, he was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While preparing a ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body. Ariely is married to Sumi, with whom he has two children, a son and a daughter. Ariely was a physics and mathematics major at Tel Aviv University, but transferred to philosophy and psychology. However, in his last year he dropped philosophy and concentrated solely on psychology, in which he received his B.A. He also holds an M.A. anda Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed a second doctorate in business administration at Duke University at the urging of Nobel economic sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he taught at MIT between 1998 and 2008, before returning to Duke University as James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. Although he is a professor of marketing with no formal training in economics, he is considered one of the leading behavioral economists. Ariely is the author of the books Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. When asked whether reading Predictably Irrational and understanding one’s irrational behaviors could make a person’s life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of a placebo), Ariely responded that there could be a short-term cost, but that there would also likely be long-term benefits, and that reading his book would not make a person worse off. Ariely’s laboratory, the Center of Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money, decision making by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017529