Hi, my name's Don Ariely. I'm the James B Duke, Professor of
Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University.
I hope you're as impressed with the title as my mother.
You might be wondering why somebody with my accent, which is an Israeli accent, is
wearing an Indian shirt. I'll tell you my philosophy about dress.
I think that people dress in a very, very uncomfortable way.
I hate suits, I hate ties. And every time I come to speak, people
expect some formal wear, which is incredibly uncomfortable.
So I figure that if I wear some clothing from a different culture, nobody who is
politically correct, and almost everybody I meet is politically correct, can ever
say something. So I be, I can be both comfortable, both
comfortable and nobody would be upset with me, and that's my strategy.
Throughout this term, semester, few weeks that we're going to hang out together
we're going to cover all kinds of topics. We're going to think about irrationality
in a general sense, like as an introduction to irrationality.
As if any of you need understanding of irrationality, but we'll go into some
depth into exactly what irrationality is, what are some of the more common ones and
how do we try to overcome them. We'll talk about the psychology of money.
Money's everywhere around us, nevertheless, when you think about it, we
don't truly understand how money works. And in this lecture, we will try to
understand the psychological effects of money and how different ways of thinking
about money, getting us to think differently and spend differently.
We'll also talk about dishonesty. We'll talk about what we think dishonesty
is driven by, and what it's actually driven by, and what can we do to try and
decrease dishonesty. We'll also talk about motivation and
labor, what gets people to care and not care what are all the things.
That gets people to care, and what is the role of money in this caring.
How bonuses work and how small amounts of money work to change people's behaviors
and motivations. We'll also talk about self-control.
Self-control is this idea that we want to behave in a certain way.
In the long term, we have all kinds of wishes and aspirations for ourselves, but
when the time comes, we often fail for temptation.
Why does it happen? How can we deal with it?
And finally, we'll talk about emotions. We have to admit that we are emotional
creatures. Emotion is the base of our brain, it
controls much of our behaviors. Nevertheless we don't give it enough
credit very frequently. And in this lecture we will try to
understand how emotions work on us. When they get the best of us, and when we
would be better without them. And that's basically what we're going to
do in this class. We're going to try and figure out what is
driving those strange behaviors. How common they are, where they come from,
what causes them. And also, how to control them and how to
try to eliminate them. I hope you'll join me, and I think it will
be fun.