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Dan Ariely
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Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely (Hebrew: דן אריאלי; born April 29, 1967) is an Israeli-American author and professor of business administration at Duke University. He is the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science. Ariely wrote an advice column called "Ask Ariely" in The Wall Street Journal from June 2012 until September 2022. He is the author of the three New York Times best-selling books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. He co-produced the 2015 documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. Ariely's life, research, and book Predictably Irrational inspired the 2023 NBC television series The Irrational.
Dan Ariely was born to Yoram and Dafna Ariely in New York City while his father was studying for an MBA at Columbia University. He has two younger sisters. The family emigrated to Israel when he was three years old. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon.
In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While he was preparing a ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body. In his writings entitled "Painful Lessons", Ariely described his hospitalization and treatments, detailing how that experience led to his research on "how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients".
Ariely was previously married to Sumedha (Sumi) Gupta in 1998; they have two children.
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, graduating in 1991. In 1994, he earned a master's degree in cognitive psychology and a Ph.D. two years later from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed a second Ph.D. in business administration at Duke University in 1998, at the urging of Daniel Kahneman. Ariely taught at MIT between 1998 and 2008, where he was the Alfred P. Sloan professor of behavioral economics. In 2008, he returned to Duke University as the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics. Ariely was also part of MIT’s Media Lab. His laboratory at Duke, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money, decision making by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.
According to Google Scholar, as of November 2025, Ariely had garnered more than 75,000 citations, and his h-index stood at 107.
Ariely's research is in the area of consumer behavior, and he studies how people often make irrational decisions. Below are some common themes.
Critique of classical economic assumptions and consumer behavior
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Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely (Hebrew: דן אריאלי; born April 29, 1967) is an Israeli-American author and professor of business administration at Duke University. He is the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science. Ariely wrote an advice column called "Ask Ariely" in The Wall Street Journal from June 2012 until September 2022. He is the author of the three New York Times best-selling books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. He co-produced the 2015 documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. Ariely's life, research, and book Predictably Irrational inspired the 2023 NBC television series The Irrational.
Dan Ariely was born to Yoram and Dafna Ariely in New York City while his father was studying for an MBA at Columbia University. He has two younger sisters. The family emigrated to Israel when he was three years old. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon.
In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While he was preparing a ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body. In his writings entitled "Painful Lessons", Ariely described his hospitalization and treatments, detailing how that experience led to his research on "how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients".
Ariely was previously married to Sumedha (Sumi) Gupta in 1998; they have two children.
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, graduating in 1991. In 1994, he earned a master's degree in cognitive psychology and a Ph.D. two years later from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed a second Ph.D. in business administration at Duke University in 1998, at the urging of Daniel Kahneman. Ariely taught at MIT between 1998 and 2008, where he was the Alfred P. Sloan professor of behavioral economics. In 2008, he returned to Duke University as the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics. Ariely was also part of MIT’s Media Lab. His laboratory at Duke, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, pursues research in subjects like the psychology of money, decision making by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.
According to Google Scholar, as of November 2025, Ariely had garnered more than 75,000 citations, and his h-index stood at 107.
Ariely's research is in the area of consumer behavior, and he studies how people often make irrational decisions. Below are some common themes.
Critique of classical economic assumptions and consumer behavior
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