Dan Ariely Shares His Book, Predictably Irrational
On North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, August 16, at 5 PM

Do you know why we so often promise ourselves to diet and exercise, only to have the thought vanish when the dessert cart rolls by? Do you know why we sometimes find ourselves excitedly buying things we don’t really need? Do you know why we still have a headache after taking a five-cent aspirin, but why that same headache vanishes when the aspirin costs 50 cents? Do you know why people who have been asked to recall the Ten Commandments tend to be more honest (at least immediately afterward) than those who haven’t? Or why honor codes actually do reduce dishonesty in the workplace? In Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational the MIT behavioral economist answers these and many other questions that have implications for your personal life, for your business life, and for the way you look at the world.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, August 16, at 5 PM, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely reveals. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. Ariely hopes that Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world—one small decision at a time.

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, with appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Department of Economics. He is also the founder of the Center for Advanced Hindsight and a visiting professor at MIT's Media Lab. Over the years he has won numerous scientific awards. Dan wrote this book while he was a fellow at the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton. His work has been featured in leading scholarly journals in psychology, economics, neuroscience, medicine, and business, and in a variety of popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, and Science. He has appeared on CNN and CNBC, and is a regular commentator on National Public Radio. He currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children.

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with Dan Ariely on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, August 16, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 26-week season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests will also include:  John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed (Holy Smoke), Justin Catanoso (My Cousin the Saint), Todd Johnson (The Sweet By and By), Michael Walden (North Carolina in the Connected Age), Barbara Fredrickson (Positivity), Michael Davis (Street Gang), Howard Lee (The Courage to Lead), Marianne Gingher (Adventures in Pen Land), and Dan Barefoot (Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.