15 colossal Dan Ariely quotes that will make you laugh and think

Dan Ariely has a long list of credentials reaching from the New York Times calling him revolutionary over Nobel Laureates saying his books are “wildly original” and “ingenious” to Ted Talks that have been seen more than 10 million times. Testing everything he possibly can Dan’s books are highly entertaining and informative exploring the depths of dishonesty and irrotationality and how they impact our lives. Here are 15 of his quotes which hopefully will make you think and laugh.

1. Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behaviour, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.
2. Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So, if you think that the main mechanism is rationalisation, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.
3. We talk about honesty, but the reality is we have lots of human values, and they are not all compatible. We don't always tell the truth about everything, no matter what the consequences.
4. Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.
5. It is true that from a behavioural economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So, from this perspective, it is rather depressing. But at the same time, there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches!
6. In terms of the actual curriculum for management education, my own view is very simple-minded: The world is incredibly complex, it changes all the time, and we should not even hope that we could create a general model that accurately describes the world in all its possible states.
7. 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.
8. Honesty is a complex and tricky thing, and we don't want, to be honest all the time.
9. What kind of people would be able to rationalise better than other people? Better storytellers, right? Creative people, right? Because if you're creative, you find more ways to cheat and still yourself a story about why this is okay.
10. The experiments show quite clearly that, as you resist more and more temptation, you're actually more and more likely to fail.
11. While we somehow understand revenge on an intuitive level between individuals, I do suspect that companies, assuming that people are rational, completely miss and underestimate the motivation people have for revenge.
12. 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.
13. I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them?
14. It is helpful to think of people as having two fundamental motivations: the desire to see ourselves as honest, good people, and the desire to gain the benefits that come from cheating - on our taxes or on the football field.
15. In a world where everyone is behaving honestly, any dishonesty constitutes a big infraction. But, in a world where many people are behaving dishonestly, and the news is filled with stories of their infractions, even big infractions can feel small to the perpetrator.

Conclusion

Interesting points that Dan makes in his quotes are the ones about market models and storytelling. Since I first heard about the concept of the Invisible hand and markets balancing themselves in the interest of everyone involved it felt to me like a whole lot of BS based on the underlying assumptions that Adam Smith made. Basically, by getting out transport costs, time and assuming everyone has access to the same information at the same time he turned a massively complex problem into child’s play. The way of achieving this is turning every participant in the market into selfish old testament god. If you ever had to sell to make your living you know for a fact that this is an illusion and a stupid model to use to make decisions for entire markets in which real people live and breathe.

The other point he makes about storytelling is also very observant. What else is the skill of storytelling which is so sought after for sales representatives all over the world than a euphemism for the capability to lie to yourselves and others to sell a product, Of course, you can not write this into a job description. Storytelling sounds way better. If you want to learn more about what really works in the world of sales and training to push yourself check out my content on LinkedIn and here on my blog.

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